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Most of them are using your connection to sell access to residential proxies: oxylabs (NordVPN), luminati (Holla) etc.
by chimen 7y ago
Most of them are using your connection to sell access to residential proxies: oxylabs (NordVPN), luminati (Holla) etc.
- altdatathrow 7y agoThey do far more than simply install backdoors for residential proxy networks. They also capture and resell your entire http(s) request history via their mitm. That's every single HTTP request every single app on your phone makes. It's a gold mine of information. They also sell profiles of exactly which apps you have installed on your phone, how often you're using each, and geolocation data if they get that permission. Avast recently shutdown their subsidiary Jumpshot [1] who was doing similar. They were intercepting desktop traffic through their anti-virus software and browser plugins, and then selling your complete browsing history on a per-user (don't worry it was "anonymized" /s) to anyone willing to pay. Mostly to corporations, marketing platforms, and hedge funds. Sensor Tower is doing the precisely the same thing for the same audience. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxejbb/avast-antivirus-is-shutting-down-jumpshot-data-collection-arm-effective-immediately https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxejbb/avast-antivirus-is...
- TedDoesntTalk 7y agoGood related article, in case anyone still thinks well of NordVPN: https://medium.com/@derek./how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-6c51045dbc30 https://medium.com/@derek./how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-...
- Dylan16807 7y agoThat article isn't good at all. It jumps to conclusions that are not at all justified.
- lonelappde 7y agoHow about this? https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-residential-ip-proxy-as-a-dark-service-dea9010a0e29 https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-...
- Dylan16807 7y ago> oxylabs (NordVPN), luminati (Holla) Wow that's misleading. Oxylabs and Luminati are both residential proxy networks. Hola is a VPN that sells access to Luminati. NordVPN is a VPN that does not sell access to anyone. It is not sending anyone else's data through your connection. There's an accusation that it shares ownership with Oxylabs, and that's about it. NordVPN might be buying, not selling, residential proxy access from someone, but it's very unclear if that's true and either way doesn't have a negative impact on their customers.
- lonelappde 7y agoOh Nord's not bad because pay other people to break into other people's computers but but respect their own customers' privacy? https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-residential-ip-proxy-as-a-dark-service-dea9010a0e29 https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-...
- Dylan16807 7y agoAssuming they do so, the comment I replied to is still extremely misleading. But do you have any actual evidence they do so? Having some IPs that show up as residential isn't good enough. That article doesn't call out any specific VPNs.
- 01CGAT 7y agoA snippet from the article on the residential IP's: "Furthermore, we conducted realtime device fingerprinting when we captured each IP address. And we have successfully identified the device type and vendor information for 547,497 IP addresses. What surprised us is that 237,029 of them turned out to be IoT systems, such as web camera, DVR, and printer."
- chimen 7y agoVery misleading yes: https://luminati.io/static/patent/2019-12-31_NordVPN_Complaint.pdf?md5=910323-d3e66363 https://luminati.io/static/patent/2019-12-31_NordVPN_Complai...