Detection & trust · glossary

Silent ban

A silent ban, or soft block, is a website's response to suspected automation that looks like success: HTTP 200 with a page whose prices, listings or search results are missing, stale, randomised or replaced by a generic version. It is harder to detect than a 403 because the request "worked". Monitoring the content itself, not just the status code, is the only reliable way to catch it.

1 min read Also called soft block, shadow block, degraded content Updated

Errors & troubleshooting All terms

Detecting it#

  • Compare the proxied page with the same page from a real browser in the same country.
  • Assert on fields: an empty price list or a listing count of zero is a signal, not a result.
  • Track the ratio of "empty" pages per exit type and per rate; a rise means the target changed its posture.

Responding#

Move the target to a more trusted exit type, lower the per-exit rate, keep sessions consistent and align the client fingerprint. Treat the soft block like a CAPTCHA you cannot see.

How it works at ProxShift#

ProxShift bills bytes, not requests, so a degraded page costs what it weighs; switching a target from datacenter to residential or from residential to mobile requires only a hostname or parameter change on the same account.

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