There are a few roadblocks that you can run into when navigating the web - these apply if you are a user, or if you are automatically navigating the web. These roadblocks can stop you in your tracks, prevent you from doing what you are looking to do, or in some cases present different content than you were expecting. Using proxies can generally be a good way of getting around these restrictions. Let’s dive into the types of issues that you may encounter, and then how we can get around them using proxies.

Types of restrictions

Let’s review the types of restrictions that you may encounter, and how they can affect your web experience, as well as your automations.

Location

There are a number of different reasons why sites will restrict the access to their content based on the IP location that it is being accessed from. Video streaming services, such as Netflix, are a good example of this as they may only have the licensing rights to certain content within certain countries - a show may be available in the UK, and not in the US, for example. Retailers sometimes use this to show different pricing depending on the location.

Sensitive information

Organisations will often restrict access to their information assets to the IP addresses of the organisation to protect the information. Accessing this information through an IP that has not been whitelisted can lead to you not being able to access it and can make it difficult to automate. In this case, it’s best to have a chat with your IT department, they may be able to provide you with a proxy that you can use to access the information, or may be able to whitelist the Axiom.ai IP addresses - these change every few months, [contact our support team] for details on the most recent addresses.

Blocked IP addresses

If a site suspects that you are doing something that is against their terms, they can sometimes blacklist your IP address and this can prevent you from accessing their services using that IP address. This will often mean that you will hit an error if you visit their site. Contacting their team is often the only way to get them to unblock an IP address, but this could take quite a while as the request propagates through the organisation to their IT department. Using a proxy to get around this ban may be considered unethical, but is possible to do.

IPs and Axiom.ai

The restrictions above can impact your Axiom.ai automations - let’s review why this is the case. When you run your automation in the Axiom.ai Cloud, it will get assigned an IP address from a pool that we have available. We rotate these every few months to avoid popular services blocking them. These IP addresses do not match up with your own IP address, and may not be in the country that you are currently located.

In the event of a geo-restriction of content, this can mean that even if you can access content if you visit the page manually, if the content is restricted for the location where the IP address is located, the automation may not be able to access this content.

Using the “Run w/ desktop app” option will run your automation on your own computer and will use your own IP address. This can ensure that you can access the exact same content that you see if you access a site using your own browser, this can be helpful if you need to run your automation inside your organisation's network.

Proxies

A proxy is a server that acts as a gateway between you and the Internet. Instead of your computer connecting directly to a website, your connection will go through the proxy server first. This means that your automation will see the proxy services IP address rather than your own. There are quite a few benefits in using a proxy, such as:

• Hiding your IP address for privacy reasons.
• They can help protect your network from malicious attacks by acting as a buffer.
• Content can be filtered using proxies - helpful for parental or organisational controls.
• Getting around restrictions, such as geo-restricted content.

Clearly, these do have the ability to get around some of the restrictions that we mentioned above, including the location restrictions. As they are relatively cheap, this also means that you can swap out your proxies if they get blocked by any service.

Proxies and Axiom.ai

It is possible to route your automations through a proxy - this can give you additional control over the IP address that your automation uses when interacting with a website. This can be helpful if you require your automation to be associated with a certain location or if your organisation has specific requirements.

To set a proxy within your automation, head into the settings of your automation and into “Use a proxy” and follow the on-screen instructions to set your proxy. Axiom.ai currently does not provide proxies, but a quick search on the Internet will provide various results for services that can be used. We recommend reviewing the protocols that we support before subscribing to a proxy service to ensure that they will be compatible.

You can learn more about setting up a proxy within Axiom.ai in our [Use a proxy] documentation.

Wrapping up

Proxies can provide you with security and privacy benefits, as well as providing you with access to geo-restricted content that you may not have previously had access to when using an IP that is not located within the country that the content is available. When it comes to your Axiom.ai automations, this can provide benefits to allow you to have your automation access geo-restricted or organisation-restricted content that it may not be able to on its own.