Beta feature lets datacentre and ISP proxies emulate the TCP/IP fingerprint of Windows, macOS, Linux, Android or iOS, set per request or at export

MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM, October 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Byteful, the UK-based web data infrastructure platform formerly known as Ping Proxies, today announced TCP/IP Fingerprint Emulation, a beta feature that allows its datacentre and ISP proxies to emulate the transport-layer fingerprint of Windows, macOS, Linux, Android or iOS. The feature is live for every datacentre and ISP customer and targets a detection method that the largest anti-bot providers now use to identify proxied traffic before a single byte of HTTP is sent.

Byteful processes 30 billion+ requests a month for 1,700+ customers running web scraping, data pipelines and AI automation workloads that increasingly need to pass transport-layer checks as well as IP and browser checks.

Detection Has Moved Down the Stack

Bot detection has moved down the network stack one layer at a time. IP bans came first, and proxies were the answer. The browser then became the loose end, which led to anti-detect browsers. The largest anti-bot providers have since caught up and now inspect TCP/IP fingerprints: the way a connection behaves at the transport layer, in the handshake that happens before any HTTP request.

This matters for proxies because proxy servers run Linux, and parts of the TCP handshake with the target server reveal it. A browser that identifies as Windows over a connection that behaves like Linux describes a device that does not exist, and that mismatch is enough to flag a request.

A User-Space TCP Stack Built In-House

Until now, Byteful’s infrastructure set the TCP layer, and customers could not change it. To make the fingerprint a customer choice, the company built a user-space TCP stack. Rather than relying on the Linux kernel’s TCP behaviour, its proxies can emulate the TCP stack of other operating systems, so customers can change the fingerprint on demand without changing their client or configuration.

What Ships Today

1. Five operating systems: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, with the TCP handshake matching whichever one the customer’s client is actually running.
2. Datacentre and ISP proxies: available on both static proxy types. Residential and mobile proxies are not included in this release.
3. Per-request control: the operating system is passed as a parameter in the proxy username, for example USER_os_windows, so each request can carry a different fingerprint and one proxy can serve several setups.
4. One-time control at export: a TCP/IP Fingerprint can be chosen when exporting a proxy list from the dashboard, so every proxy in the file carries it with nothing to add to the customer’s configuration.

Working Alongside OS Targeting

Byteful already offers OS Targeting, which lets customers select proxies by the operating system they run on. TCP/IP Fingerprint Emulation is separate and changes how the connection itself behaves, so the two can be combined to keep every layer of a request pointing at the same device.

“A proxy should emulate the device making the request at every layer, not just the ones that are easy to set. Until now the TCP layer was ours, and customers couldn’t touch it, so we rebuilt it in user space and handed the choice over. It’s in beta, and I would rather hear about the bugs than have people quietly work around them,” said Timur Gok, Founder of Byteful.

Beta Availability and What’s Next

TCP/IP Fingerprint Emulation is in beta: live and ready to use, with the possibility of bugs. Customers who see unexpected behaviour can report it to support@byteful.com or through the Byter AI Agent in the Byteful dashboard. The feature is available now to all datacentre and ISP customers and can be enabled on the next export from the dashboard.

About Byteful

Byteful is a UK-based web data infrastructure platform providing access to a global network of ethically sourced residential and mobile proxies. The company supports businesses building web scraping systems, data pipelines, and AI-powered automation tools through its API-first platform.

Timur Gok
Byteful
+44 7552 932323

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