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points by superjan 3 days ago | 0 comments

I was expecting that VPN’s (maybe not all) also use their own customers as relays, but you don’t mention them. Am I wrong?

[–] rcxdude 3 days ago

It's definitely not all VPNs (typically the ones you pay for will buy their own hardware and internet connections in the places you can route your traffic through), but it is a common situation for the shadier (especially 'free') ones, and in that case it's usually not just a peer-to-peer thing, they make money by selling your connection to people who pay because they want a large pool of relatively reputable and disconnected IPs to send traffic through.

[–] charcircuit 3 days ago

That kind of VPN is considered a residential proxy.

[–] ZoneZealot 3 days ago

You're right, a lot of 'free VPN' software also uses your own internet as a residential proxy. It's often mentioned in the ToS but the users don't read that.

[–] dylan604 3 days ago

Honestly, I expect any of those free VPN services that require an app install to be doing precisely this. At this point, I just assume anything with "free" in it will cost me more than if I just paid for something instead.

[–] rustyhancock 3 days ago

I'm surprised it doesn't cause more chaos, even as simple as people getting copyright infringement notices from their ISP?

[–] deltoidmaximus 3 days ago

Or worse.

But most likely these residential proxy services are more valuable for scraping, DDoS and manipulation plays on social media so they might not actually be used for things that draw direct attention. Using them to download illegal materials would be a waste of resources when a VPN does the job just as well.