407, timeout, connection refused — reading your proxy's errors

407 Proxy Authentication Required

What it means: the proxy answered you. It is simply refusing your credentials.

That is good news: the network works, the port is right, the service is running.

Causes, by frequency:

1. Password changed in the panel and not carried over into the software. By far the most common.
2. Credentials typed into the wrong fields (address in "login", for instance).
3. One extra space copied at the start or the end. Invisible, and fatal.
4. The software does not send authentication at all — Chrome on the command line, for example, cannot send SOCKS5 credentials.

What to do: copy the username and password from the panel instead of retyping them.

Connection refused / ECONNREFUSED

What it means: nothing is listening on that port.

1. Wrong port. Check that you use the HTTP port with an HTTP client and the SOCKS5 port with a SOCKS5 client — that swap is the most frequent one, and it produces exactly this error.
2. Expired proxy. An access that has reached its end date stops answering. Check the date in My proxies.
3. You typed another server's address.

Timeout / the request just hangs

What it means: your request went out and nothing comes back.

1. The mobile source is offline. A dongle that lost the network, a saturated cell. The panel shows the source's status: start there.
2. Rotation in progress. During an IP change the line is unavailable for a few seconds. That is normal. Wait and retry.
3. Data quota reached. See the quota.
4. Your firewall blocks the outbound port. Rare at home, common in a company.

Proxy CONNECT aborted / HTTPS will not go through

Almost always an HTTP proxy used by software sending non-HTTP traffic. An HTTP proxy only carries HTTP: for everything else you need the SOCKS5 port.

The page loads, but the site says you are not in France

Traffic is going through, but something else gives you away:

• DNS leak: your machine resolves names itself. See the article.
• WebRTC leak: the page read your real IP in JavaScript. Same article.
• Time zone not aligned with the IP.
• Browser language set to US English behind a French IP.

It all worked yesterday, nothing works today

In this order:

1. Has the term expired? On expiry the proxy password is regenerated: your old credentials stop working, which produces a 407. Renew from My proxies — see your balance.
2. Is the quota reached?
3. Is the source online? The panel says so.
4. Did you change anything? An antidetect browser update, a new network, a VPN switched on over the top.

Before you write to support

Send these four things and you halve the turnaround:

• the name or port of the proxy concerned;
• the exact output of the test command (see the article);
• the complete error message, copied, not summarised;
• the time it happened.

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See also: Checking that your proxy works