Proxies in e-commerce and commodity arbitrage

Roman

Sep 29, 2025

Proxy

### **Proxies in e-commerce and product arbitrage: from price parsing to multi-accounting**

In the hyper-competitive world of e-commerce, the winner is the one who owns the data and knows how to use it. Dynamic pricing, lightning-fast response to changes in a competitor's product range, managing dozens of accounts on different platforms — all this is not a luxury, but a basic condition for survival. The technological foundation that makes all this possible is proxy servers.

However, a naive approach to their use — “I'll buy the cheapest ones and run a parser” — is guaranteed to lead to instant blocking, loss of data, and money. Large marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Wildberries, or Ozon are not just websites, but real digital fortresses with multi-level protection.

In this article, we will conduct a complete analysis of an e-commerce specialist's arsenal: we will study how marketplaces protect themselves, what types of proxies are capable of breaking through this protection, and how to build a competent infrastructure for parsing, analytics, and secure multi-accounting.

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#### **Part 1. The battlefield: What data are they hunting for in e-commerce?**

Before talking about tools, it is necessary to understand the value of the target. [Automated data collection (web scraping or parsing)](https://app.cyberyozh.com/blog/mobile-and-residential-proxies-are-they-suitable-for-scraping-mobilnye-i-rezidentskie-proksi-podhodyat-li-oni-dlya-skrapinga/) allows you to extract information that directly affects your bottom line:

* **Competitive intelligence:** Real-time monitoring of competitors' prices, promotions, discounts, and delivery terms.
* **Assortment management:** Tracking new arrivals, bestsellers, and, most importantly, products that are out of stock at competitors so you can quickly fill the vacant niche.
* **SEO analytics for listings:** Parsing product cards to analyze keywords, descriptions, and media content that give competitors high positions in marketplace search results.
* **Sentiment analysis:** Mass collection and analysis of reviews to assess public opinion about a product, identify its weaknesses, and understand audience needs.
* **Product arbitrage:** Automatically search for low-priced products on one platform (e.g., Walmart) to resell them on another (e.g., Amazon) at a markup.

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#### **Part 2. Digital Fortress: How Marketplaces Protect Themselves from Parsing**

Parsing puts a heavy load on server infrastructure and exposes commercial data. That's why marketplaces invest enormous resources in protection systems.

* **Blocking by IP and ASN (Autonomous System Number):** Basic level of protection. As soon as the number of requests from a single IP address exceeds the threshold typical for a human, that IP is blocked. Moreover, advanced systems analyze the ASN — the unique identifier of the provider's network. If the ASN belongs to a data center (e.g., Hetzner, OVH, AWS), traffic from it is marked as suspicious by default.
* **Rate Limiting and Throttling:** Limitation mechanisms. **Rate Limiting** is a hard limit on the number of requests per unit of time (e.g., 100 requests per minute). **Throttling** is the artificial slowing down of response speed for suspicious IPs, which makes parsing economically unprofitable.
* **CAPTCHA and Honeypots (Traps):** If user behavior seems suspicious, the system issues a **CAPTCHA** — a test that cannot be solved by a simple script. **Honeypots** are links hidden from ordinary users. If a parser follows such a trap link, its IP is instantly permanently banned.
* **Advanced Fingerprinting:** Modern WAFs (Web Application Firewalls) analyze not only the IP, but also the entire digital fingerprint of the client: **User-Agent**, HTTP headers, TLS handshake parameters, the presence and behavior of JavaScript, as well as active **Canvas** and **WebGL** fingerprints, which allow for high-precision identification of a unique device.

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#### **Part 3. Proxy hierarchy: Choosing the right key for each task**

This is where beginners make a fatal mistake by choosing cheap data center proxies. Professional e-commerce tasks require a more sophisticated approach.

* **Data center (DC) proxies:** Fast and cheap. **Application:** extremely limited. May be suitable for parsing websites with weak protection or working with APIs that do not analyze ASN. For Amazon, eBay, Walmart — **useless**.
* **ISP proxies (static residential):** This is a hybrid. They are physically located in data centers (which gives them speed and stability), but use IP addresses registered to real home internet service providers (ISPs). **Application:** ideal for tasks that require a permanent, high-trust IP address, such as managing a single important seller account.
* **Residential proxies:** The “workhorse” for parsing. These are the IP addresses of real home internet users. For the marketplace, you are a regular buyer.
  * **High Rotation:** Automatic IP change after each request or after a short period of time. Ideal for mass and rapid data collection from thousands of pages.
  * **Sticky Sessions:** Ability to fix one IP for 5, 10, or 30 minutes. This is necessary for tasks that mimic a user session (e.g., searching for a product -> going to the product page -> adding it to the cart).
* **Mobile proxies:** The highest echelon. These are IP addresses of real mobile operators. Thanks to **Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT)** technology, a single mobile IP can be used by thousands of subscribers at the same time, so blocking such an address for a marketplace is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot. **Application:** the ultimate solution for the most secure platforms, especially for creating and managing seller accounts where the highest level of trust is required.

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#### **Part 4. Practical examples**

**Example 1: Parsing prices for dynamic pricing**

* **Task:** Track the prices of 50,000 products from 10 competitors on Amazon every hour.
* **Solution:** Use a pool of **rotating residential proxies**. Each competitor uses its own geo-targeting (for example, proxies from the US for `amazon.com`, from Germany for `amazon.de`). The parser is configured for high IP rotation speed to avoid rate limiting.

**Example 2: Secure multi-accounting for product arbitrage**

* **Task:** Manage 20 seller accounts on eBay without the risk of them being linked and blocked.
* **Solution:** Use an **anti-detection browser** (e.g., DICloak, Dolphin Anty, Octo Browser). Each browser profile is assigned a unique, permanent (**static**) proxy. For maximum trust, **mobile** or **ISP proxies** are used. This ensures complete isolation and congruence of digital fingerprints for each account.

### **Conclusion**

Working in modern e-commerce means working with data at the highest speeds. Proxy servers in this environment are not an auxiliary tool, but a fundamental component of the infrastructure, the quality of which directly determines whether you will receive the necessary data or constantly struggle with blockages. A professional approach is not about the fact of using proxies, but about the competent choice of their type (resident, mobile, ISP) and application strategy (rotation, sticky sessions) in conjunction with other technologies, such as anti-detection browsers.

👉 **Ready to take your e-commerce business to the next level?** In our arsenal, you will find [**rotating residential proxies**](https://app.cyberyozh.com/proxy/residential/) for large-scale parsing, [**Data Center proxies**](https://app.cyberyozh.com/proxy/datacenter/), and elite [**mobile proxies**](https://app.cyberyozh.com/proxy/mobile/) for secure multi-accounting on the most secure platforms.

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