Reading an IP Checker Screenshot, Field by Field

An IP checker result looks like a dozen labelled lines, and sellers screenshot it as proof without saying which lines prove what. Some fields are hard facts from public registries. Some are a database vendor's best guess. Some describe the browser rather than the address. This guide walks a typical screenshot from top to bottom and says, for each field, where the value comes from, how much to trust it, and what a Real US Proxies line should show there. Read it once and no screenshot, ours or anyone else's, will be a mystery again.

IP address

The public IPv4 address your traffic left from. On a carrier SIM this is the address of the carrier's gateway, shared through carrier-grade NAT with many subscribers. It changes when you rotate and may change on its own when the carrier resets a session. It is a fact, not a guess, but it tells you nothing by itself; the fields beneath it interpret it.

ISP, organisation and ASN

These three come from the public routing and registry records and are the most trustworthy lines on the page. ISP or organisation names the network that owns the block: T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless or Cellco Partnership, AT&T Mobility for a real US SIM. ASN is the number of the network announcing the block: AS21928, AS22394 or AS6167, AS20057 respectively. A hosting company or a VPN vendor appears here when the proxy is not a SIM. Compare the number with this list.

Country, region and city

Country is reliable: a US carrier block is in the United States. Region, the state, is reliable on all three carriers. City is a database vendor's estimate of where the carrier's gateway is registered, and it can name a hub rather than the device's city: T-Mobile usually matches the metro, AT&T may show a regional hub, Verizon may show another city in the same state. Two vendors can disagree about the same address on the same day. Treat the city line as a hint and the state line as a fact.

Connection type or usage type

Cellular, mobile or wireless for a real SIM; hosting or data center for a server; residential for a home connection; business for an office block. This field is a classification maintained by the database vendor from registry data and observed traffic, and it is the one websites consult when deciding how to treat a visitor. On a Real US Proxies line it reads cellular or mobile, and that single word does more for an account than any other field on the page.

Proxy, VPN and Tor flags

These are guesses, and often inherited ones. Some vendors mark whole carrier ranges as proxy because mobile proxies are commonly sold on them, and a flag next to a carrier address does not mean your line was identified. Platforms rarely act on a proxy flag attached to a cellular address because doing so would block real phones. Read the flags, but weigh them against the connection type: cellular plus a proxy flag is ordinary; hosting plus no flag is a datacenter.

Time zone, language and WebRTC

The last block of a checker describes your browser, not the address: the time zone your profile reports, the language it accepts, and any addresses WebRTC leaks. These are the fields you control and the ones that most often betray a careless setup. A line whose address reads Houston while the browser reports Asia/Shanghai is a contradiction a platform can see. Set the profile to the line's metro and US English, and confirm the WebRTC line shows only the carrier address or nothing.

• Hard facts: IP address, ISP, organisation, ASN, country, state.
• Vendor estimates: city, proxy and VPN flags, risk score.
• Your browser's own report: time zone, language, WebRTC addresses.

Common misreadings

Three mistakes come up again and again when buyers send us a screenshot. The first is treating the risk score as the answer to whether the SIM is real; it is not, because the score describes the crowd sharing the address, while the ISP and connection type describe the network. The second is reading a checker while the browser's own VPN extension is still switched on, so the result describes the extension and not the line. The third is comparing two screenshots taken from two different checkers and concluding that something changed, when the vendors simply disagree. Use one checker for a before and after, and close every other proxy tool first.

Frequently asked