Ask HN: Is it possible for a residential proxy provider to exist ethically?

Posted by walrus01 1 day ago

I'm leaning towards "no", because I've not seen a single bulk residential proxy provider that doesn't use some form of trickery to get people to agree to a TOS/AUP that bundles their proxy. Extremely few if any users install a residential proxy allowing unknown 3rd parties to run traffic through their house with full knowledge of what that really means, nor are they compensated for it.

Comments

Comment by KomoD 7 hours ago

Yes, there are 2 common ways:

1. People willingly enter the pool and get paid for it. Some examples: Packetstream, Honeygain and EarnApp

2. So called "ISP" proxies, they're hosted in a data center but the IPs/connectivity are rented from residential ISPs and are basically indistinguishable from a regular residential IP.

Comment by d3Xt3r 1 day ago

Not all of them are shady. Well, at least not shady in the sense of using dark pattern trickery or by malware delivery.

The way the "legit" providers operate is by pitching a "get paid to share your unused bandwidth" spiel. Of course, it's highly unlikely that these users understand the full consequences of running a proxy, so I reckon it's still dodgy, kinda like predatory loans, MLMs and other "legal" schemes desperate folks fall for.

Now in theory there could be an operator that discloses all the risks up front, but I don't imagine they'd have many takers. Unless they pay really well (bearing in mind that "well" is very relative; 50c/GB in a third-world country can be decent money).

See: https://www.proxyrack.com/blog/5-best-data-selling-apps-to-e...

Comment by ahsanmandhar 1 day ago

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