Residential Proxies are the most emblematic technology of our era- a group of people looked at something that used to be considered a crime (botnets) and realized that if they just did it openly, no one would ever punish them.

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TurdF3rguson an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think they also have to operate in countries that don't mind shady things like this.

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thomasahle an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

TIL:

> Many providers build their proxy pools by partnering with device owners who agree to share their bandwidth, while others use embedded SDKs in free apps or VPNs.

WTF. That's just botnets.

Source: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber/alerts/2026/evading-re...

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jolmg 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Mmm... your quote (IDK where it's from) mentions them having consent from device owners, but your FBI link cautions on how to avoid getting infected by malware.

If they have consent, they're not really botnets. Botnets involve infecting devices without the owners knowing.

With consent, it wouldn't be much different from e.g. open WiFis at restaurants and hotels, companies using a single ISP and single public IPv4 address for all their employees, and most VPN services.

	▲	not-a-llm 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		by consent they mean a dialog/EULA with careful wording was display and the user clicked ok.

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BoorishBears 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank god for residential proxies.

Highly unethical but the way the internet is going they're the last anti-hero of a somewhat open internet

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Bratmon 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

By providing a way for corporate AI scrapers to operate with impunity and force the last few independently-run websites to move to the cloud?

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zuzululu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i know a few very large startups that used it to fake their way into an exit

unethical yes but really raises the question as to what we see is real or not

	▲	morkalork an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Money is real. DAU that don't pay subscriptions, or don't lead to paid conversions on hosted ads, are worthless.
	▲	BoorishBears 44 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"Raises the question of what we see is real" No they really don't, dishonest founders do that. You're one with the lower case shibboleth so I have no doubt you surround yourself with dishonest founders, but faking users is pretty damn low on the usecases for residential proxies. I said they're unethical because they tend to be hidden in innocuous seeming apps or sprung on unwitting individuals via clickwraps on their smart devices.