[aPoCoMiLogin]

recently had to research "residential proxy", and the number of websites that claim that they have millions of IPs on hand was very strange. then the fact that a lot of them work in the exact same way, and a lot of them accepted payment mostly in crypto was very strange. so now connecting the dots, makes sense now why these "residential proxy" websites looked and worked the same way

[baobabKoodaa]

also note that all of them claim that their residential proxies are "ethically sourced" (unlikely their competitors, I guess?)

there's no such thing as an ethically sourced residential proxy.

[TZubiri]

Additionally, there's almost no ethical use for a residential proxy. The purpose is always to deceive, at best you get lightly unethical uses like "avoiding georestrictions on IP distributors like netflix", or "avoiding controls in dictatorships" which is acknowledging that it is used to break the law, but maybe it's the wrong kind of law.

Even these soft reasons to use VPNs and residential proxies are like an alibi for bad actors, is IP 25.14.xx.xx creating a fake account on twitter to spread malware or is he downloading a show that wasn't available before? I guess we'll never know such are the limits of privacy I guess.

[ribosometronome]

What laws are you breaking using a residential VPN to access Netflix?

[ifwinterco]

It's analogous to people using other people's accounts (with or without their well-informed permission) for small to moderate amounts of illegal transactions. It's a simple strategy but it's actually very hard for authorities to completely stop as your illicit activity gets lost in the huge amount of everyday noise

[inemesitaffia]

Some sites block entire countries or even apply GDPR restrictions to Africa

[Retr0id]

I've been thinking about building an actually-ethical residential proxy system, for censorship-evasion purposes.

The internet in a growing number of countries is censored, but different content categories are censored in each jurisdiction. Many sites and services also block known VPNs (i.e. non-residential IPs), so that doesn't work as a bypass in all cases.

I have trusted friends in other countries, so by mutual agreement we could set up wireguard links for each other to use (subject to agreed terms). It just needs some way to intelligently route traffic depending on which jurisdictions will allow which requests (i.e. "which is the lowest-latency link that will allow this request").

[tuhgdetzhh]

> I've been thinking about building an actually-ethical residential proxy system, for censorship-evasion purposes.

That thing already exist and is called Tor Snowflake.

[Retr0id]

That's not the same as what I'm suggesting.

[heinternets]

The issue with this is in many authoritarian nations they will see your Wireguard link and block it. Or even knock at your door.

[kruffalon]

And the concept of web of trust and signing parties just gets more and more valuable for each day!

[dewey]

> there's no such thing as an ethically sourced residential proxy.

There is, just like you giving your attention and cpu to watch free ad supported content on the internet. It's the same in apps that give users access for free in return for bandwidth, or free VPNs that allow you to share bandwidth. There's also ISP "residential" proxies where ISPs re-sell some of their address space to proxy providers.

[baobabKoodaa]

So it's ethical to bypass bot restrictions and rate limits by pretending to be a bunch of residential connections?

[cruffle_duffle]

If it’s to enable users to fetch their own data, it’s absolutely ethical. These websites can offer API’s so people can access their own data “above the board” but instead make it incredibly difficult.

[hofrogs]

"Users fetching their own data" is probably less than a hundredth of a percent of traffic passing through residential proxies, I'd even bet some money on that.

[baobabKoodaa]

Yeah, if that's your use case, why not just use a regular datacenter proxy?

[dewey]

Not much different than blocking access to people without JS enabled, blocking people stuck behind NAT, blocking whole countries or require them to solve Cloudflare captchas.

[baobabKoodaa]

What does any of this have to do with residential proxies? If you can't access a website because you have disabled JS, you won't be able to access that website with a residential proxy either.

[dewey]

I was referring to the fact that many websites block / force users to use the resource in a certain way, why shouldn't they in return have the right to bypass these restrictions.

[navigate8310]

Their are services that allow users to share their bandwidth in return for some cents per GB, a way to passively earn income.