[fn-mote]

> Can't the customer rate-limit connections?

Bad guys use a botnet (compromised residential computers and routers) to defeat rate limiting and ip-based blocking.

[cute_boi]

Recently there was a article where LG smart tv were hacked and used for this entire thing.

[coldbrewed]

Exactly this. Residential proxies are _the_ tool that makes stealth browsers and massive scraping work, and it's overwhelmingly done without informed consent.