sherlock-proxyhat

Run Sherlock — the OSINT username hunter — through ProxyHat residential proxies. Rotating residential IPs by default (a fresh IP per connection across the hundreds of sites Sherlock checks), plus geo-targeting and anonymity, so you get rate-limited and blocked far less.

What this is

Sherlock is an app, not a library: you run sherlock <username> and it checks that name across 400+ sites, accepting a single --proxy <url> for all of them. Hammering that many sites from one datacenter IP gets throttled and blocked fast.

sherlock-proxyhat is a thin launcher. It resolves a ProxyHat residential gateway URL, then runs the real sherlock executable with --proxy <url> prepended — every other argument (usernames and Sherlock's own flags) passes straight through. No fork, no patched Sherlock: it just wires ProxyHat into the --proxy flag Sherlock already has.

Install

pip install sherlock-proxyhat sherlock-project

sherlock-project (which provides the sherlock command) is an optional dependency — this launcher shells out to the sherlock executable, so any install works (pip, pipx, system package). To pull it in with the launcher:

pip install "sherlock-proxyhat[sherlock]"

Quick start

# An API key auto-selects an active residential sub-user:
export PROXYHAT_API_KEY=ph_xxx

# Same arguments as sherlock — just run it through the launcher:
sherlock-proxyhat johndoe

# Geo-target and add sherlock's own flags; everything after is passed through:
sherlock-proxyhat --proxyhat-country us johndoe janedoe --timeout 30 --csv

Get an API key at proxyhat.com.

Anything that isn't a --proxyhat-* option is forwarded to sherlock verbatim, so every Sherlock flag (--timeout, --site, --nsfw, --csv, -o, …) works unchanged.

Credentials

Pass them as --proxyhat-* flags or via environment variables — flags win over env:

Targeting

All targeting lives on --proxyhat-* flags, which are stripped before the command reaches sherlock:

sherlock-proxyhat \
  --proxyhat-protocol http \      # or socks5
  --proxyhat-country us \         # ISO code or "any" (default)
  --proxyhat-region california \
  --proxyhat-city los_angeles \
  --proxyhat-filter high \        # AI IP-quality tier
  johndoe

Rotating IPs by default

Sherlock reuses one proxy for the whole run, so this launcher builds a rotating gateway username by default: the ProxyHat gateway hands out a fresh residential IP on every connection, spreading the hundreds of per-site checks across many IPs — exactly what you want to dodge per-IP rate limits during a scan.

Want to pin a single IP for the whole run instead? Add --proxyhat-sticky (optionally with a lifetime via --proxyhat-sticky-ttl):

sherlock-proxyhat --proxyhat-sticky johndoe               # one pinned IP, 30m default
sherlock-proxyhat --proxyhat-sticky-ttl 2h johndoe        # one pinned IP, 2h lifetime

Bring your own proxy

If you pass Sherlock's own --proxy/-p (or --tor) yourself, the launcher steps aside: it forwards your arguments unchanged and does not inject a ProxyHat URL.

Credentials never hit your logs

Sherlock prints the full --proxy URL on startup (Using the proxy: http://user:pass@gate.proxyhat.com:8080), which would otherwise leak your ProxyHat proxy_username/proxy_password into the terminal and any captured logs. Because the launcher builds that URL, it knows the exact secret strings and redacts them: it pipes Sherlock's output and streams it line by line (nothing is buffered — long scans stream normally), masking the credentials to http://***:***@gate.proxyhat.com:8080 before anything reaches your stdout. Sherlock's result lines pass through unchanged.

Using the URL builder directly

Need the gateway URL in your own script or a different tool? Import the helper:

from sherlock_proxyhat import proxyhat_proxy_url

url = proxyhat_proxy_url(api_key="ph_xxx", country="us")
# -> "http://<user>-country-us:<pass>@gate.proxyhat.com:8080"

Rotating by default (sticky=None); pass sticky="30m" (or True) to pin one IP.

How it works

The launcher parses out its --proxyhat-* options, resolves your gateway credentials via the official proxyhat SDK (an API key auto-picks an active sub-user, or pass username/password), and builds a connection URL carrying ProxyHat's targeting grammar (http://<user>-country-us:<pass>@gate.proxyhat.com:8080, or socks5://…:1080). It then finds the sherlock executable on your PATH and runs sherlock --proxy <url> <your other args> as a subprocess, returning Sherlock's exit code. A rotating username makes the gateway hand out a fresh residential IP per connection; --proxyhat-sticky pins one.

Roadmap

This launcher wraps Sherlock's existing --proxy flag on purpose — it's the honest, low-friction way to ship today. A planned follow-up is an upstream PR to Sherlock adding a native --proxyhat flag (resolve credentials and geo-target from within Sherlock itself, no wrapper), so ProxyHat becomes a first-class option in the tool. Until that lands, this package is the supported path.

License

MIT © ProxyHat