5 ms·

Are there even ethical or “official” ways to source residential IPs? I thought most of them were from botnet infected IoT devices.

pseudo0 5y ago
I'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 ago
  You 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 ago
    In 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 ago
      A 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
You can buy a bunch of mobile SIMs and use them.
alephu5 5y ago
I worked on a fairly large web-scraping project (around 2 million pages per day) and we used luminati. Amongst other things, they offer genuine residential proxies with user consent. https://brightdata.com/proxy-types/rotating-residential-ips https://brightdata.com/proxy-types/rotating-residential-ips
- ipython 5y ago
  Reading that page, the “user consent” is dependent on third parties who are monetizing their app through this service to inform their users. I … um … doubt the third party app developers give a crap to accurately describe the traffic that will subsequently emanate from their users’ devices. Just like everything else in this industry, the retort will be “but it’s the users fault! They didn’t scroll through the 2,375 page privacy policy, user agreement, hold harmless indemnification agreement, and terms of use when they agreed to an ad free experience for their mahjong app! What a stupid user! Ha!” To that I say, enjoy the coming oppressive regulations. It’s already started. As a kid, I always wondered why we required stupid laws to regulate common sense. Now I know why.
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    We don't need oppressive regulations; we simply need courts to adopt a sane definition of "agree". If you're foisting an adhesion contract on more than 1,000 people, they are not deemed to have "agreed" unless a majority of a random sampling (say, ten) of them actually read and understood the entire document. Otherwise it's void. "Read and understood" is decided by a jury as part of any litigation involving the contract. "Random sampling" is made by court evidentiary procedures. If the contract is negotiated or it was presented to less than 1,000 people the rules stay the way they currently are, since those are the kinds of contracts that English common law was developed for.
- detaro 5y ago
  > " with user consent." things like this are ... iffy at best: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pga9yk/your-tool-to-access-netflix-content-abroad-is-hijacking-your-internet-connection https://www.vice.com/en/article/pga9yk/your-tool-to-access-n...
abc03 5y ago
Packetstream.io buys bandwidth from users and is cheap. I‘m a customer.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Pretty good margins: They pay users $0.10/gb and they sell it to you for $1.

pseudo0 5y ago

I'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 ago
You 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 ago
  In 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 ago
    A 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

You can buy a bunch of mobile SIMs and use them.

alephu5 5y ago

I worked on a fairly large web-scraping project (around 2 million pages per day) and we used luminati. Amongst other things, they offer genuine residential proxies with user consent. https://brightdata.com/proxy-types/rotating-residential-ips https://brightdata.com/proxy-types/rotating-residential-ips

ipython 5y ago
Reading that page, the “user consent” is dependent on third parties who are monetizing their app through this service to inform their users. I … um … doubt the third party app developers give a crap to accurately describe the traffic that will subsequently emanate from their users’ devices. Just like everything else in this industry, the retort will be “but it’s the users fault! They didn’t scroll through the 2,375 page privacy policy, user agreement, hold harmless indemnification agreement, and terms of use when they agreed to an ad free experience for their mahjong app! What a stupid user! Ha!” To that I say, enjoy the coming oppressive regulations. It’s already started. As a kid, I always wondered why we required stupid laws to regulate common sense. Now I know why.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  We don't need oppressive regulations; we simply need courts to adopt a sane definition of "agree". If you're foisting an adhesion contract on more than 1,000 people, they are not deemed to have "agreed" unless a majority of a random sampling (say, ten) of them actually read and understood the entire document. Otherwise it's void. "Read and understood" is decided by a jury as part of any litigation involving the contract. "Random sampling" is made by court evidentiary procedures. If the contract is negotiated or it was presented to less than 1,000 people the rules stay the way they currently are, since those are the kinds of contracts that English common law was developed for.
detaro 5y ago
> " with user consent." things like this are ... iffy at best: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pga9yk/your-tool-to-access-netflix-content-abroad-is-hijacking-your-internet-connection https://www.vice.com/en/article/pga9yk/your-tool-to-access-n...

abc03 5y ago

Packetstream.io buys bandwidth from users and is cheap. I‘m a customer.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Pretty good margins: They pay users $0.10/gb and they sell it to you for $1.