Glossary · Protocols & authentication
IP whitelisting
Authorising a proxy by pre-approving the IP addresses allowed to use it, instead of sending a username and password.
IP whitelisting authenticates by origin. You tell the provider which source addresses are yours, and the proxy accepts connections from those and refuses everything else. There is nothing to send with each request because your address is the credential.
The appeal is that it is invisible in use. No secrets to embed in a scraper's config, nothing to leak in a log, just connections that either come from an approved address or do not. For a server with a fixed IP, it is the cleanest option.
Its weakness is the mirror of its strength. The moment your own address changes, a laptop moving networks, a home connection with a dynamic IP, the whitelist stops matching and access drops until you update it. Where your source address wanders, credential-based auth is the more portable choice.
Back to the full glossary.