Old proxy lists sorted proxies into three levels. A transparent proxy passes your real address along in a header. An anonymous one removes your address but adds headers that admit a proxy is in the way. An elite, or high-anonymity, proxy adds nothing.
The levels matter little today. For https sites the proxy only carries an encrypted tunnel and cannot add headers to the request at all. What a site judges now is the address itself: its network, its history and whether the browser behind it looks real.
You may still meet the header names in old guides: X-Forwarded-For carried the real address through a transparent proxy, and Via announced that a proxy was in the path. Rotating proxy services do not add them.
Questions about anonymous proxy
Are residential proxies elite proxies?
In the old sense, yes: they add no headers that reveal a proxy. But the label says little today, because sites judge the address and the browser, not the headers.
Can a website tell that I am using a proxy?
Not from the headers of an https request. It can guess from the address: a datacenter range, or an address that many different visitors have used, suggests a proxy.
Related terms
- HTTPS through a proxy
- Yes. An HTTP proxy opens https sites through a tunnel, using a request called CONNECT. The traffic inside stays encrypted end to end.
- IP reputation
- IP reputation is the trust a website places in an IP address, based on who owns it and how addresses like it have behaved before.
- Proxy server
- A proxy server is a computer that passes your requests on to a website, so the website sees the proxy's IP address and not yours.
Read next: Residential vs datacenter vs mobile proxies