IP Purity Basics
People often describe an IP as clean, risky, residential, datacenter, proxy, or leaked. These labels are shortcuts, not absolute truth, but they are useful when you understand what they usually mean.
Residential vs Datacenter
Residential IPs are usually assigned through consumer broadband or mobile carriers. Datacenter IPs are typically associated with cloud providers, hosting networks, or server infrastructure. Neither label is automatically good or bad, but they often carry different trust expectations in third-party systems.
Proxy And VPN Signals
Public data providers may label an address as proxy-like, VPN-like, or relay-like when the network pattern looks similar to traffic aggregation or masking services. These signals can be noisy, so they should be treated as indicators rather than final judgment.
What WebRTC Exposure Means
Browsers can sometimes expose additional local or public addresses through WebRTC. If those addresses do not match the network path you expected, the result may be described as a leak. This does not always mean a severe privacy incident, but it can explain why an environment appears inconsistent.
How To Read A Result
- Look at multiple signals together, not one label only.
- Use the result as operational context, not as absolute truth.
- Re-test when your browser, network, or provider changes.