Our blog is PROXYS.IO

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MadBid.com is a marketplace where digital assets are bought and sold. Owners of online projects post their listings, and buyers find what matches their goals, no matter which country they live in.

Thanks to its diverse international audience, the platform brings together market participants of all experience levels from many regions. Convenient categories and search tools help you browse listings quickly and compare the available options.

"VPN/proxy detected" on YouTube means YouTube has classified your connection's IP address as a VPN, proxy, hosting network or privacy relay, and the video or channel you opened won't play over it. The screen says "To continue, turn off your VPN/proxy." If you don't use a VPN, the cause is hidden routing on your device or an ISP address that databases mislabel.

Key points

• Any VPN or proxy blocks playback on YouTube TV, Primetime channels and restricted channels, by rule.
• On regular YouTube, only channels that chose to restrict playback show the error.
• Detection is a score built from IP databases, ASN, shared IPs and browser or network mismatches.
• Without a VPN, the cause is hidden routing or a misclassified ISP address.
• Check in this order: direct connection, hidden routing, IP classification, location settings, then clear the cache.

Proxy SwitchyOmega no longer runs in Chrome and won't return: Chrome 138 blocked Manifest V2 extensions on July 24, 2025, and Google removed the last of them from the Chrome Web Store on August 31, 2026, according to the Chrome for Developers timeline. Among the best Proxy SwitchyOmega alternatives, ProxyControl is the best choice overall. It's the only one of the five whose listing describes a proxy check on connect, automatic failover to a working proxy and rental expiry tracking, and its October 2, 2026 update is the most recent. We compared five free Manifest V3 extensions by their store listings and documentation.

The facts that decide the switch:

Private Internet Access runs one SOCKS5 proxy server, proxy-nl.privateinternetaccess.com on port 1080, in the Netherlands. Setups in a single app or in Multi-Hop usually fail for one of three reasons: the wrong login, a hostname where the app expects an IP, or a browser that can't send a SOCKS5 password.

Does Private Internet Access offer a SOCKS5 proxy?

Yes. PIA's help center documents a SOCKS5 proxy at proxy-nl.privateinternetaccess.com, port 1080, set up with credentials generated in your PIA account. There is nothing extra to download.

The proxy has its own login: your account username starts with "p" (p1234567), while the SOCKS5 username starts with "x" and has its own generated password. PIA's settings guide describes the SOCKS5 option as an unencrypted proxy that masks your IP address, so only traffic the app encrypts itself, such as HTTPS, stays private.

The best Plain Proxies alternatives depend on which Plain Proxies product you are replacing and which problem made you look elsewhere; for most users, Proxys.io covers both. We compared six providers by price per GB and per IP, real minimum payment, traffic expiry, targeting and refund terms, using first-party pricing pages checked on October 16, 2026.

Best Plain Proxies Alternatives: Quick Answer

Proxys.io is the best Plain Proxies alternative in 2026: one account covers static IPv4 and IPv6, ISP, residential and mobile proxies, with crypto payments and a 24-hour refund.

1. Proxys.io – best overall: static IPs from $0.13/IP per month, mobile proxies from $56.79 per month.

2. IPRoyal – residential traffic that never expires (1 GB for $7.35).

Footsite proxies are judged on one release morning: a slow list, or one already flagged on Foot Locker or Champs Sports, loses the drop. Of the 10 providers we compared, PROXYS.IO is the best overall, with proxies in 195+ countries, ISP speeds of up to 250 Mbps, a 100M+ residential IP pool, HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, and 24/7 support.

Quick verdict: the best sneaker proxies at a glance

•  Best overall: PROXYS.IO, with proxies in 195+ countries, ISP speeds of up to 250 Mbps, a 100M+ residential IP pool, HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, and 24/7 support.
•  Best for Nike SNKRS: Decodo, with ZIP and ASN targeting and a 14-day refund window.
•  Best for US Shopify lists: Hype Proxies, with ISP IPs in Ashburn and Dallas from $1.30/IP.
•  Best for a single release: MarsProxies, which rents one ISP IP for one day.

The short answer to why use mobile 4G/5G proxies for Instagram account creation in 2026 is address sharing: a carrier IPv4 address serves many subscribers at once, so it is an ordinary origin for a sign-up. Among 10 providers, PROXYS.IO ranks first: private mobile ports with unmetered traffic from $56.79 per 30 days, residential traffic at $1.50 per GB across 195 countries, and a 24-hour refund.

Quick verdict: the best proxies for Instagram at a glance

• Best overall: PROXYS.IO. Private mobile ports with unmetered traffic from $56.79 per 30 days, residential traffic at $1.50 per GB across 195 countries, and a 24-hour refund.
• Best budget: DataImpulse. Mobile traffic at $2 per GB and residential traffic at $1 per GB. Top-ups after the first $5 purchase start at $50.
• Best for a mobile IP by the day: IPRoyal. A dedicated mobile proxy from $10.11 per day, plus rotating mobile traffic at $6.80 per GB from 2 GB.
• Best for carrier and ASN targeting: ProxyEmpire. 4M+ mobile IPs in 170+ countries at a list price of $9.00 per GB.
• Best for one rate on both networks: SOAX. $5.00 per GB for mobile and residential traffic in Tier 1 locations, with KYC before the first purchase.
• Best for long sticky sessions: Oxylabs. Up to 1,440 minutes on mobile and residential IPs, on monthly plans from $30.

The message “cannot establish proxy connection” does not appear in the error-page string files of Chrome or Firefox, and people who search for it add the word VPN and the name of the VeePN extension. Behind the message the browser shows one of three codes: ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED, ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED or ERR_SOCKS_CONNECTION_FAILED. Each code marks a failure at a different stage of the connection and has its own fix.

Most desktop users see codes of the ERR_… kind. According to StatCounter for September 2026, Chrome holds 65.09% of desktop browsers, Edge 14.64% and Firefox 6.11%. Chrome and Edge are built on Chromium, so this guide follows their codes and gives Firefox wording on separate lines. I reproduced every error on test proxies in Chromium 141 and curl 8.22.0, and I describe what I saw on the screen.

To get rid of a proxy, switch it off in the network settings of the device: four steps on an iPhone, five on Windows, macOS, Chrome or a Chromebook. The server address stays saved after that, so removing the proxy also means clearing it.

The instructions cover Windows 11 and 10, macOS 13 to 27, Chrome on a computer, iPhone and iPad, and ChromeOS.

How to turn off a proxy on Windows

Windows 11 and Windows 10 keep three proxy switches on one Settings page, and all three must be off.

Quick answer: mobile proxy vs residential proxy

• A mobile proxy exits through a carrier’s 4G network, where many subscribers share one address; a residential proxy exits through a home broadband line.
• Pick mobile for account work and mobile ad checks on one channel; pick residential for data collection across many cities and countries.
• Mobile is usually billed per port, residential per gigabyte; at typical prices ($55 a port, $3.75 per GB) break-even is about 15 GB.

A mobile proxy address comes out of the pool that a cellular carrier hands to phones and modems on its 4G network. A residential proxy address is the one a home internet provider assigned to somebody’s router. Websites can tell the two apart, and so can your invoice: one is rented by the day, the other is metered by the gigabyte. We have sold both since 2016, so we have no reason to steer you toward either.