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This is relatively easy to block, given that these companies publish their IP ranges. Similar to the Tor block, blocking "datacenter IP's" simply becomes the no
by tushar-r 5y ago
This is relatively easy to block, given that these companies publish their IP ranges. Similar to the Tor block, blocking "datacenter IP's" simply becomes the norm. This is why you have companies offering "resi's" or residential proxies to bypass such blocks for some years now.
- TheFreim 5y agoI heard a while back, on HN 8 I think, that a lot of residential proxies are computers that have been infected with malware. How true is that?
- robjan 5y agoThere have been a number of Chrome extensions which monetize by selling your bandwidth to provide this kind of service. Not ethical but probably not a compromise.
- oefrha 5y agoBrowser extensions, and VPNs. Notably, Luminati was allegedly selling HolaVPN users as exit nodes. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hk-en/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/shining-a-light-on-the-risks-of-holavpn-and-luminati https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hk-en/security/news/cybercr...
- dstick 5y agoThis is not alledgedly but very much true. I was in the proxy business for a few years and in talks with the Luminati people to white-label their product for a very specific type of proxy. It’s such a weird field to be in. It’s not illegal by definition of law, but you’re definitely in shady territory, with most of the customers being of the “get rich quick” persuasion. Or at the very least trying to cut corners. One way or another, they were not playing by the rules ;-)
- Scoundreller 5y agoAlso the economic basis of a lot of "cell-phone farming".
- 0xy 5y agoA significant portion are grey market "ISPs" that purport to sell residential services but actually never do. They sell these "residential" IPs to Amazon, other ecommerce retailers and shady people for an extreme price. In the e-commerce world, scraping is necessary to stay in business. Amazon has armies of scrapers constantly monitoring their competitors, and in some cases automatically undercutting price updates.
- Scoundreller 5y agoSame on the consumer side. I like setting up alerts on camelcamelcamel and seeing price history (to make sure I'm not getting screwed) and to buy buy buy when prices hit a certain theshold.
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- samjmck 5y agoAre there even ethical or “official” ways to source residential IPs? I thought most of them were from botnet infected IoT devices.
- pseudo0 5y agoI've heard of services that offer free proxy bandwidth in exchange for the user acting as a residential proxy node for other users and/or paying clients. It's generally marketed as a way for the user to avoid geoblocks and such. If this is clearly stated to the user upfront rather than buried behind half a dozen dark patterns and fine print, it seems like this business model could be conducted ethically. When it comes to whether the companies in this space are currently acting ethically though, I have serious doubts.
- cinntaile 5y agoYou have autobuying bots (sneakers or GPUs or other limited edition stuff) that need to do tricks like this. I wouldn't necessarily call them unethical.
- pseudo0 5y agoIn my opinion it's unethical if the website explicitly states in their terms of service that bot purchasing is not allowed. As far as I know, that is pretty common for websites that sell frequently scalped products, and near-ubiquitous among those that implement technical countermeasures. I'd expect cybercriminals and fraudsters also find a pool of disposable residential IPs to be very useful.
- cinntaile 5y agoA Terms of Service is not a proxy for morals though. Companies will put whatever is convenient for them in there, I'm sure you can come up with several examples that you wouldn't consider ethical.
- devit 5y ago
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