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Some of the proxies are pretty scary though.

As are some VPNs. It's concerning that so many people route all their traffic (when connected) over some unknown third parties network. Default gateway and server pushed DNS. Only HSTS and certificate pinning would prevent their traffic being sniffed or tampered with.

Huh? Unless your endpoint peers directly with your ISP, you always route over unknown third party networks.

True but it's much easier for a malicious player to set up a VPN service selling cheap a anonymity as a way to gather MITM targets than it is to set up an ISP or transit provider.

In Brazil we saw a brief explosion of VPN use to get around Whatsapp ban.

Now we are getting reports of people intimate videos being uploaded to porn sites... (considering whatsapp is not much safe in first place, it is no surprise... I even tried to warn people and convince them to use Telegram instead but "network effect" is a strong thing...)

Yeah I really wonders who runs them, seems like it has been a golden opportunity for scammers and other malware crowds.

Given the amount of malware I downloaded from warez BBSes back in the day, I wouldn't be surprised.

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