Someone on r/marketing wanted to see how Instagram ads work, so they opened a fresh account. "Instagram hit me with "The IP address you are using has been flagged as an open proxy", then banned me and told me I have 180 days to appeal." One person, one signup. The message reads like an accusation. It is a verdict on the address, the only thing in that sentence you can change.
This post is about that one moment: the signup, the IP behind it, and the walls right after it. Warming routines and the residential-versus-ISP basics are in how to run multiple Instagram accounts without bans and stay there.
What "flagged as an open proxy" actually means
The message means Instagram's signup path looked up your IP address and decided it is not a normal home connection, either because the address sits on a known proxy, VPN or datacenter range, or because Instagram has already seen too many signups from it. It is a decision about the address. Not about you.
Every signup through an address is a mark against it, and a home IP that has produced several accounts in a short stretch starts to look like a proxy even when it is a cable modem in a kitchen. A 2017 r/SocialMediaMarketing thread already had it: "Instagram blocks account setup with ip address after 5 accounts created an all the computers use same IP address."
It is also how a roommate ends up blamed. On r/SocialMediaMarketing: "I am logged into a few IG accounts on my phone, some client accounts and some mine. Today my roommate tried to create an IG account for a personal project and got the "The IP address you are using has been flagged as an open proxy" error. Was this my fault?" Probably, yes. Several accounts behind one household address, then a fresh signup from it. The signup path saw the history and said no.
It is not an "IP ban" in the sense of a permanent list. But nothing resets either. Come back tomorrow from the same address and the same history is still there, so the message fires again, which from the outside feels exactly like a ban.
Why the residential pool that worked last year is flagged at signup
A rotating residential exit is shared with strangers, and the signup path is the one place where sharing hurts most, because every account somebody else created from that exit counts against yours. On June 23 someone on r/SocialMediaMarketing described the shape of it: "Antidetect side is fine, fingerprints check out, this is purely an IP problem at this point. Resi pools that worked last year are now flagged on signup or shadowbanned within a few days."
That is the pool aging. A residential exit is a real household connection lent out to everyone in the pool, and three other people may have opened Instagram accounts from your exit this month. Instagram sees one address and four signups. The exit is not fake. It is used up.
Oversold mobile ranges go the same way. From r/GrowthHacking: "while the pages load fine, my accounts are getting shadowed or hit with verification loops almost immediately after a few actions. It feels like these premium subnets are already flagged/blacklisted by the platforms." The address works. Its history is the problem.
Rotation makes it worse. A signup that starts on one address and finishes on another is its own flag. From r/OSINT: "I also use a paid proxy service but I still keep getting the IP ban even when using a fake IP address to make new accounts." A paid pool is still a pool. Paying does not make an exit yours.
Which address actually gets a new account through
The address that gets a new account through is one no other signup has touched, and the account then stays on it. Two kinds of address fit.
A static ISP address is assigned to you alone. It has no signup history until you give it one, and nobody else uses it in between. Create one account on it, leave the account there, and the address looks like what it is: one connection with one account behind it. Do not create a second account on it the next day. Its history is yours to keep clean.
A mobile address is shared too, but with real phone subscribers behind carrier NAT, which is why Instagram tolerates several accounts behind one and why it costs more. Someone on r/SocialMediaMarketing asked the fair question: "Do mobile proxies really help with account stability or just hype?" On the signup itself, yes. On most other work, no, and do you actually need mobile proxies has the economics.
The 50-account version of this question
The r/OSINT poster wanted the answer at scale: "I just need to create 50-60 accounts to finish exporting the followers." A BlackHatWorld thread described "just over 2,000 Instagram profiles" behind "a multi-login browser and 4G proxies." An r/automation post had a Playwright account creator that "worked for a few days" until "the accounts keep getting flagged after half an hour of creation."
No IP type makes 50 signups from one setup look like 50 people. The address is one signal; the device, the number, the timing and the first ten minutes of behaviour are the rest. We sell addresses. An address helps one signup look like one person. That is enough for most people in these threads, who wanted three accounts and a roommate who is not locked out.
The phone verification wall, and whether its country matters
Yes, the number's country matters, and it should agree with the IP's country; a US address paired with a number from somewhere else is one more reason for Instagram to hold the account. A July thread on r/SocialMediaMarketing set up the case: "routing 100% of my traffic through a high-quality US Residential/ISP Proxy (Verizon). Whoer tests are flawless, locking my location to Washington, US. However, during the Instagram account creation on desktop, I hit the unavoidable mobile number verification wall ... Due to strict Meta spam filters, almost all cheap virtual US numbers are flagged"
That last sentence is what the threads agree on. Cheap virtual numbers get rejected outright, or get accepted and then feed a verification loop days later. The people who report getting through use a physical SIM from the target country and keep it, because Instagram will ask for that number again.
We do not sell phone numbers. Nothing on this site gets you past that wall. For a US account built from outside the US, the address is the cheap part. The SIM is the part you cannot skip.
Does the proxy country decide your reach?
A US IP alone does not make your Reels reach a US audience; the account's language, the phone number, the content and who interacts with it early decide that together with the address. From r/SocialMediaMarketing in May: "Since I am from EU I know people are using mobile proxies to target other markets ... Main goal is to not get shadow banned." From r/DigitalMarketing in April: "couldn't get reach on Instagram Reels from the US (My target audience) Tried VPN, and Decodo Proxies, both got me Shadow banned. So only option I'm left with is this, Locally I'm getting a US Sim but it's quite expensive"
That poster got there the hard way. The IP moved, everything else still said home, and the mismatch got the account throttled. The full logic is in how to reach a US TikTok audience from outside the US and transfers to Instagram unchanged: the address has to agree with the SIM, the phone's region, the app store and the language, and then hold still.
What the address does decide is whether the account survives long enough for the rest to matter. It cannot buy reach. It can avoid being the reason there is none.
Android: the proxy only shows up in WiFi settings
On Android the proxy field in WiFi settings is a system HTTP proxy that browsers and some apps honour, and the Instagram app is not reliably one of them. A BlackHatWorld thread hit exactly this: "purchase Android mobile, purchase US static residential proxy, for 1-2 profiles of each IG & TT per device & IP. Device is Android 15. I do not have a SIM ... Turns out, the proxy can only be set in WIFI"
Two problems. A native app can ignore the WiFi proxy and go out on the phone's real connection, and you will not know until it is too late. And there is no SIM, which lands you back at the verification wall.
How people route the native app is a VPN-style proxy app, a per-app tunnel that captures the app's traffic and pushes it through the proxy whether the app cooperates or not. Before creating anything, open a what-is-my-IP page inside the Instagram in-app browser, not Chrome, and confirm it shows the proxy address. This is a workaround, not something we support, and the exit has to be checked after every reconnect.
What to do the next time you see the message
Stop trying from that address. Each retry adds another signup attempt to the history that triggered it.
Then, in order. Get an address nobody else has created accounts from, static so it stays yours. Put the phone number in the same country, on a real SIM if the account matters. Set the device's region and language to match. Create one account, on that address, from that device, and leave it there. On Android, check from inside the app that traffic is leaving through the proxy before you tap sign up.
If you need five accounts, that is five of everything. If you need fifty, an address is not the thing you are missing.