I've had enough of companies saying "you're connecting from an AWS IP address, therefore you aren't allowed in, or must buy enterprise licensing". Reddit is an example which totally blocks all data to non-residential IP's.
I want exactly the same content visible no matter who you are or where you are connecting from, and a robust network of residential proxies is a stepping stone to achieving that.
If you look at the article, the network they disrupted pays software vendors per-download to sneakily turn their users into residential proxy endpoints. I'm sure that at least some of the time the user is technically agreeing to some wording buried in the ToS saying they consent to this, but it's certainly unethical. I wouldn't want to proxy traffic from random people through my home network, that's how you get legal threats from media companies or the police called to your house.
> that's how you get legal threats from media companies or the police called to your house.
Or residential proxies get so widespread that almost every house has a proxy in, and it becomes the new way the internet works - "for privacy, your data has been routed through someone else's connection at random".
> Or residential proxies get so widespread that almost every house has a proxy in, and it becomes the new way the internet works - "for privacy, your data has been routed through someone else's connection at random".
in a way, yes - the weakness of tor is realistically the lack of widespreadness. Tor traffic is identifiable and blockable due to the relatively rare number of exit nodes (which also makes it dangerous to run exit nodes, as you become "liable").
Engraining the ideas of tor into regular users' internet usage is what would prevent the internet from being controlled and blockable by any actor (except perhaps draconian gov't over reach, which while can happen, is harder in the west).
Of course they're pitching it like everything's above board, but from the article:
> While many residential proxy providers state that they source their IP addresses ethically, our analysis shows these claims are often incorrect or overstated. Many of the malicious applications we analyzed in our investigation did not disclose that they enrolled devices into the IPIDEA proxy network. Researchers have previously found uncertified and off-brand Android Open Source Project devices, such as television set top boxes, with hidden residential proxy payloads.
I love how its the "evil" Open Source project devices, and "other app stores" that are the problem, not the 100s of spyware ridden crap that is available for download from the Play store. Would be interesting to know how many copies of the SDK was found and removed from their own platform.
I live in the UK and can't view a large portion of the internet without having to submit my ID to _every_ site serving anything deemed "not safe the for the children". I had a question about a new piercing and couldn't get info on it from Reddit because of that. I try using a VPN and they're blocked too. Luckily, I work at a copmany selling proxies so I've got free proxies whenever I want, but I shouldn't _need_ to use them.
I find it funny that companies like Reddit, who make their money entirely from content produced by users for free (which is also often sourced from other parts of the internet without permission), are so against their site being scraped that they have to objectively ruin the site for everyone using it. See the API changes and killing off of third party apps.
Obviously, it's mostly for advertising purposes, but they love to talk about the load scraping puts on their site, even suing AI companies and SerpApi for it. If it's truly that bad, just offer a free API for the scrapers to use - or even an API that works out just slightly cheaper than using proxies...
My ideal internet would look something like that, all content free and accessible to everyone.
> that they have to objectively ruin the site for everyone using it. See the API changes and killing off of third party apps.
Third party app users were a very small but vocal minority. The API changes didn't drop their traffic at all. In fact, it's only gone up since then.
The datacenter IP address blocks aren't just for scrapers, it's an anti-bot measure across the board. I don't spend much time on Reddit but even the few subreddits I visited were starting to become infiltrated by obvious bot accounts doing weird karma farming operations.
Even HN routinely gets AI posting bots. It's a common technique to generate upvote rings - Make the accounts post comments so they look real enough, have the bots randomly upvote things to hide activity, and then when someone buys upvotes you have a selection of the puppet accounts upvote the targeted story. Having a lot of IP addresses and generating fake activity is key to making this work, so there's a lot of incentive to do it.
I agree that write-actions should be protected, especially now when every other person online is a bot. As for read-actions, I'll continue to profit off those being protected too but I wouldn't be too bothered if something suddenly changed and all content across the internet was a lot easier to access programmatically. I think only harm can come from that data being restricted to the huge (nefarious) companies that can pay for that data or negotiate backroom deals.
Have you considered that it’s because a new industry popped up that decided it was okay to slurp up the entire internet, repackage it, and resell it? Surely that couldn’t be why sites are trying to keep non humans out.
> I live in the UK and can't view a large portion of the internet without having to submit my ID to _every_ site serving anything deemed "not safe the for the children".
Really? Because I live in the UK and I've never been asked for my ID for anything.
> I want exactly the same content visible no matter who you are or where you are connecting from
The reason those IP addresses get blocked is not because of "who" is connecting, but "what"
Traffic from datacenter address ranges to sites like Reddit is almost entirely bots and scrapers. They can put a tremendous load on your site because many will try to run their queries as fast as they can with as many IPs as they can get.
Blocking these IP addresses catches a few false positives, but it's an easy step to make botting and scraping a little more expensive. Residential proxies aren't all that expensive, but now there's a little line item bill that comes with their request volume that makes them think twice.
> We need more residential proxies, not less
Great, you can always volunteer your home IP address as a start. There are services that will pay you a nominal amount for it, even.
That's already the case (irrespective of residential proxies) because content only serves as bait for someone to hand over personal information (during signup/login) and then engage with ads.
Proxies actually help with that by facilitating mass account registration and scraping of the content without wasting a human's time "engaging" with ads.
Amazon.com now only shows you a few reviews. To see the rest you must login. Social media websites have long gated the carrots behind a login. Anandtech just took their ball and went home by going offline.
There's a company that pays you to keep their box connected to your residential router. I assume it sells residential proxy services, maybe also DDoS services, I don't know. It's aptly named Absurd Computing.
Agreed. With things people paid for and using our wifi data to build their "positioning dbs" that you can't block or turn off on your phone, without "rooting" your own device.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought of myself as proxying other people’s traffic by carrying my iPhone around. (For one thing, it’s my own phone that initiates all the activity- it monitors for Apple devices, the devices don’t reach out to my phone.) I can see how you could frame it that way, though. I just thought they might be referring to something else that I didn’t know about.
I remain skeptical. I can understand how one would might see it that way, but I think it’s stretching the word proxy too far.
Devices on Apple’s Find My aren’t broadcasting anything like packets that get forwarded to a destination of their choosing. I would think that would be a necessity to call it “proxying”.
They’re just broadcasting basic information about themselves into the void. The phones report back what they’ve picked up.
That doesn’t fit the definition to me.
I absolutely don’t mind the fact that my phone is doing that. The amount of data is ridiculously minuscule. And it’s sort of a tit for tat thing. Yeah my phone does it, but so does theirs. So just like I may be helping you locate your AirTag, you would be helping me locate mine. Or any other device I own that shows up on Find My.
It’s a very close to a classic public good, with the only restriction being that you own a relevant device.
I still "run" a small ISP with a few thousand residential ips from my scraping days. The requirements are laughable and costs were negligible in the early 2000s.
This blog post from the company that used promise "don't be evil", one that steals water for data centers from vilages and towns via shady deals, whose whole premise it stealing other people's stuff and claiming it as their own and locking them out and selling their data.. Who made them the arbiter of the internet? No one!!!
They just stole this and get on their high horse to tell people how to use internet? You can eff right off Google.
Have you tried it? Every new account will be shadowbanned and if it's shared you often get blank page 429. None of this was true before the API shutdown.
That’s not my experience, using various VPNs, public networks, Cloudflare and Apple private relays. A captcha is common when logged out but that’s about it, I have not encountered any shadow bans. I create a new account each week.
That's not the same as "blocks all data to non-residential IP's"?
>if it's shared you often get blank page 429. None of this was true before the API shutdown.
See my other comment. I agree there's a non-zero amount of VPNs that are banned from reddit, but it's also not particularly hard to find a VPN that's not banned on reddit.
Private VPS for personal VPN in Netherlands (digital ocean), then Hungary (some small local DC) — both are blocked from day one.
> You've been blocked by network security. To continue, log in to your Reddit account or use your developer token. If you think you've been blocked by mistake, file a ticket below and we'll look into it.
Proton VPN sometimes (mostly?) has this issue too. It's a bit of an hit or miss in there iirc but I have definitely seen the last message of your comment.
That's just mullvad's IP pool being banned. The other VPN providers I use aren't banned, or at least are only intermittently banned that I can easily switch to another server.
I have never interacted with a reddit employee who wasn't actively gaslighting me about the platform. Do you even use the site? I talked to a PM recently who genuinely thought the phone app was something people liked.
everything on Reddit is so locked down it’s useless. even if you do get to post something useful some basement dwelling mod will block it for an arcane interpretation of one of the subreddits 14 rules.
I've had enough of companies saying "you're connecting from an AWS IP address, therefore you aren't allowed in, or must buy enterprise licensing". Reddit is an example which totally blocks all data to non-residential IP's.
I want exactly the same content visible no matter who you are or where you are connecting from, and a robust network of residential proxies is a stepping stone to achieving that.