I’ve been tasked with offshoring our mobile redirect monitoring. Unfortunately, since most of our traffic is US, we want to use a VPN so that the person monitoring is simulating a US-based experience. In addition, they will also need to proxy the traffic from the phone into Charles on their computer so that we can identify the source of the redirect when it occurs.
I have tried Hotspot Shield and TunnelBear and so far have not been able to setup a VPN on my phone that will allow the traffic to be proxied in Charles. It just doesn’t seem to work. I’m getting pressure from above to make this work and don’t think I’m technical enough to figure this out.
Has anyone else tried this and gotten it to work?
I have been down this road DEEP and will tell you right now that the effort you are putting into this will not create the change you desire and you are wasting your time.
Sure, you may find a DSP to be responsible for serving a redirect, maybe even the exact campaign. It won’t matter, since the DSP these dirtbags buy through rotates daily, same with the seats. You are playing whack a mole, after the mole has already peed in your cereal.
I would advise paying for insurance in a service. We started with Confiant and found the cost reasonable and the proactive blocking a big help. We still get hit daily, but the reports enable you to ID the buyer, DSP, and campaign typically.
To answer your question, I ended up using a proxy service (like GeoEdge) over WiFi. Tunnelbear worked for me previously. Tunnelbear may help you proxy, but you would still be connected via WiFi. I have found that a WiFi connection will inhibit your ability to find the redirects.
Use the Charles Proxy from your iPhone to the computer, and then use the VPN on the computer. I’ve used TunnelBear previously on a MacBook with no issues. Charles’ing in was exactly the same, just use the VPN on the computer and NOT on the iPhone.
Im not at my workstation to test this but I suspect that the problem is when you initiate vpn, you are not in the same subnet as your computer hosting charles.
One workaround is to basically run the simulator l/emulator on your mac to mimic the phone. All data will still go through Charles.
Redirect ads are highly targeted, so the incidents that you discover with this approach will likely be few and not representative. However, here’s an article that might get you going in the right direction as far as setup:
If you’re looking for an enterprise solution to this problem, please feel free to drop me a line and I’d be happy to see if we can get you setup with a trial.
QQ: are you connecting to Charles or the VPN first?
Thanks for your feedback. When you say that TunnelBear worked previously and now you use GeoEdge, what is the difference there?
Does GeoEdge allow you to proxy over a cellular connection?
This actually worked perfectly, not sure why it didn’t occur to me to try this. Thank you!
GeoEdge does allow you to do this, however there is a license cost to their tech. GeoEdge can do mobile device, mobile browser, country, etc. It’s easier to use than TB, but not free.
TB was used just for location proxying to simulate user experiences around the country. I may have used this with Fiddler, not Charles. Can’t remember.
Lastly, please send this to your boss and TRY an ad quality vendor as a free trial!