Ad networks like meta ads, google ads use residential IPs + small LLM to check landing page of your advertisers for malware and scams. They are already paying millions for this service.
Sometimes their system malfunctions (cough cough) and you get charged for those clicks but you fail to report them as fraudulent as you've no proof as the IPs and useragent all appear normal to ad agencies and advertisers.
I'm a bit on the fence about this, but leaning towards the "bad luck". I'm sure there's a large swathe of nuance that I'm missing, but my simplistic view is: If they don't want to be scraped then they don't get included in "the thing" which, at minimum, is a data point for consumers to make consumer decisions about.
It strongly depends on how scraped data is being used.
If your 'cat' hasn't been able to catch their 'mouse' then the cat needs to get smarter, or look for alternative sources of mice, or the cat should be considered 'unviable'.
Have you approached them to get access to their data? Have you explained to them how your service can benefit their business?
(I generally come from a position of suspicion as to why someone wants to scrape data that the owner goes to certain lengths to protect, but then I'm also an 'information wants to be free' kinda person, but the Internet is increasingly an untrustworthy place, so security is overruling narrative).
So it's okay for organized crime to do it, but not normal plebs? The former is obviously a lot more harmful and in reality this is just a wakeup call to get their shit together.
People were dismissive of security far too long. I think it's actually good that AI instills some fear into people causing it to take a lot more seriously than they have previously done so.
If anonymous currencies can be considered a national security threat despite making up less than 0.001% of the world's total value, then why not anonymous packets?
Citation needed? I'm not a fan of residential proxies but these are pretty wild claims that aren't substantiated. Calling them a "national security threat" implies it is a threat to e.g., the continued existence of the United States. Is it really that? All of the activities described are already violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
> At the very least, major American ISPs (Comcast, AT&T) should detect clearly suspicious activity coming from customer IPs and warn them to scan their computers, check their TV apps, and find whatever is turning their internet into a proxy.
What are we saying? Really, what are we saying? We should turn domestic ISPs into domestic surveillance apparatuses to "detect clearly suspicious activity"? What is "clearly suspicious activity"? Section 230 is still law.
The router could also be a good place to display live TCP usage and last 30 days usage and other network activity. There should also be a service that can identify whether specific IP addresses belong to botnets or other malicious infrastructure. If there are any abnormal activity mobile app can notify the user.
Governments could even purchase residential proxies themselves and check whether they're being used for malicious activity.
It isn't that difficult, but I guess governments just aren't that interested.
> The router could also be a good place to display live TCP usage and last 30 days usage and other network activity. There should also be a service that can identify whether specific IP addresses belong to botnets or other malicious infrastructure.
> It isn't that difficult, but I guess governments just aren't that interested.
I recently switched from my previous ISP because they randomly broke my ability to use my own router, and during the time when I had to default to using their own modem/router hardware before I could get the new ISP to come and set things up, I could barely even get a signal in my office upstairs (which had previously been connected via a mesh endpoint) because their router didn't expose any way for me to split 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz, and the router absolutely refused to let my devices connect via 2.4 GHz despite them having more than 90% packet loss due to the weak 5 GHz signal.
Regardless of how "easy" it is, I don't trust ISPs not to screw it up somehow and probably cause a lot more concrete damage (even if the individual issues they cause are smaller in magnitude) than the theoretical concerns of "national security" that, as far as I can tell from reading this thread, have caused a total of like a few hours of downtime one day in a couple decades.
They're also a wholly necessary endeavor until the surveillance industry stops discriminating against IP ranges with endless captcha nagwalls. That, including its next development of remote attestation, is a much deeper problem for Internet freedom and needs to be addressed first.
Residential proxies are necessary to access services that try to ban VPNs without compromising anonymity. If they’re banned, it’s easier for websites to require information that can be used to track you (IP address), since most people don’t use VPNs they won’t care.
More importantly, a residential proxy can be mutual. If a group of people agree to forward traffic to each others’ IP, how is it not their business? It obfuscates their identities, but this is the Internet, not e.g. a government office or test center where you obviously can’t walk in with someone else’s ID.
Banning non-consensual proxies makes sense since those are effectively malware, even though they make anonymity harder, so does banning theft and here you’re stealing someone’s internet. I’m sure we can convince enough laymen to knowingly install proxies by paying them.
Sometimes their system malfunctions (cough cough) and you get charged for those clicks but you fail to report them as fraudulent as you've no proof as the IPs and useragent all appear normal to ad agencies and advertisers.
It strongly depends on how scraped data is being used.
If your 'cat' hasn't been able to catch their 'mouse' then the cat needs to get smarter, or look for alternative sources of mice, or the cat should be considered 'unviable'.
Have you approached them to get access to their data? Have you explained to them how your service can benefit their business?
(I generally come from a position of suspicion as to why someone wants to scrape data that the owner goes to certain lengths to protect, but then I'm also an 'information wants to be free' kinda person, but the Internet is increasingly an untrustworthy place, so security is overruling narrative).
> Actual data and identity loss of American citizens.
> Malware that can record video and audio from infected devices.
> Infrastructure for foreign covert influence campaigns.
> Botnets used in hacking and DoS attacks
These things have existed for 20+ years. Bad but not exactly a national security threat.
People were dismissive of security far too long. I think it's actually good that AI instills some fear into people causing it to take a lot more seriously than they have previously done so.
The interviewee seems pretty inept yet still managed to uncover something really interesting and nefarious.
> At the very least, major American ISPs (Comcast, AT&T) should detect clearly suspicious activity coming from customer IPs and warn them to scan their computers, check their TV apps, and find whatever is turning their internet into a proxy.
What are we saying? Really, what are we saying? We should turn domestic ISPs into domestic surveillance apparatuses to "detect clearly suspicious activity"? What is "clearly suspicious activity"? Section 230 is still law.
Governments could even purchase residential proxies themselves and check whether they're being used for malicious activity.
It isn't that difficult, but I guess governments just aren't that interested.
> It isn't that difficult, but I guess governments just aren't that interested.
I recently switched from my previous ISP because they randomly broke my ability to use my own router, and during the time when I had to default to using their own modem/router hardware before I could get the new ISP to come and set things up, I could barely even get a signal in my office upstairs (which had previously been connected via a mesh endpoint) because their router didn't expose any way for me to split 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz, and the router absolutely refused to let my devices connect via 2.4 GHz despite them having more than 90% packet loss due to the weak 5 GHz signal.
Regardless of how "easy" it is, I don't trust ISPs not to screw it up somehow and probably cause a lot more concrete damage (even if the individual issues they cause are smaller in magnitude) than the theoretical concerns of "national security" that, as far as I can tell from reading this thread, have caused a total of like a few hours of downtime one day in a couple decades.
More importantly, a residential proxy can be mutual. If a group of people agree to forward traffic to each others’ IP, how is it not their business? It obfuscates their identities, but this is the Internet, not e.g. a government office or test center where you obviously can’t walk in with someone else’s ID.
Banning non-consensual proxies makes sense since those are effectively malware, even though they make anonymity harder, so does banning theft and here you’re stealing someone’s internet. I’m sure we can convince enough laymen to knowingly install proxies by paying them.