Looking for a Selenium proxy?
Selenium is the perfect web development and testing tool. It lets you use every major browser and access any site or service you want to test. This versatility makes Selenium indispensable for more than just testing. For example, you can use Selenium with Python to scrape websites. Of course, you will need a proxy service to not get blocked. This is why we are doing this short introduction about how a Selenium proxy network can help you.
What is Selenium?
Selenium is an automation tool for web browsers. With it, you can automate web apps, button clicks, fill in information, submit forms and search for specific information on any site.
These functions make Selenium indispensable for automation and screen scraping. Still, most sites do not like automated traffic on their servers, so Selenium is mostly used to test your own web services. Most sites just block your IP address after you try to access it multiple times with an automated Selenium request.
Selenium Python scraping
As we mentioned before, Selenium can be used for data mining, and Python is favorite choice for scraping with Selenium. As with all scraping operations, you will need a reliable network to protect you from blocks. Setting up a proxy in Selenium is easy. Just see the instructions on the SeleniumHQ website to find out how to call a rotating proxy network with ease. That’s how you can scrape anonymously and without detection.
Why use a Selenium proxy?
A Selenium proxy network will let you take Selenium to its full potential. No site will be able to identify you, and you will be free to scrape it, automate account creation and reach Selenium’s full potential. Set up Selenium with a Chrome proxy or a Selenium Firefox proxy and start scraping today!
In addition to a proxy, your Selenium script should rotate through various browsers to mask your activity. Do this to prevent your targets from using browser signatures to detect your activity.
The best Selenium proxy
If you are scraping with Selenium, you have to be aware of these three issues:
- Your IP is a dead giveaway of your intentions.
- If you use an unsafe proxy, your activities can be monitored by third parties.
- A simple IP change is not enough – you will need a huge proxy list.
- Private proxies do not send any of your information to the target and protect you from getting flagged, banned or throttled.
- Safe HTTPS proxies give you the industry-standard protection thanks to the SSL layer.
- A rotating proxy network lets you access millions of IPs at once through a single backconnect node – say goodbye to lists!
These three reasons are exactly why you should always use private, rotating residential proxies for Selenium scraping. Here’s why:
Lastly, a residential proxy network is like a cherry on top, because it provides IPs of real devices, unlike datacenter proxy servers, which all have very similar and easily detectable IP addresses.
Ready to pull the trigger on 55M+ residential IPs?
About the author
James Keenan
Senior content writer
The automation and anonymity evangelist at Smartproxy. He believes in data freedom and everyone’s right to become a self-starter. James is here to share knowledge and help you succeed with residential proxies.
All information on Smartproxy Blog is provided on an "as is" basis and for informational purposes only. We make no representation and disclaim all liability with respect to your use of any information contained on Smartproxy Blog or any third-party websites that may be linked therein.
