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Comment by TecoAndJix | Hacker News Reader

Digging into this on oxylabs site i found this document: https://oxylabs.io/Oxylabs_Residential_Proxy_Acquisition_Han...

"Consenting and fully aware individuals become a part of a residential proxy network in return for a financial reward or some other benefit. When they choose to participate in our suppliers’ pools, they consent that a part of their internet traffic and a small amount of the device’s hardware resources will be used for a variety of business cases."

Does anyone that uses NordVPN know how explicit this is in their client/agreement? If they are even using it...

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I use NordVPN.

I don't opt in to anything like this (as far as I know). Looking at the preferences, I don't see something that sounds like it maps to the consent above. So ... I'm not really sure.

I have NordVPN on one device.

Nothing in their license agreement and no settings for this at all.

Doesn't appear they are recruiting devices into this residential proxy service.

I've read this stuff before, from various supposedly above-board companies. If this is true, where can I sign up? I've never seen companies clearly offering this without being misleading.

Since oxylabs allows selecting a proxy at a very granular location, it should be possible for researchers to get a bunch of these dodgy browser extensions and correlate which are forwarding oxylabs traffic.

This sounds like HoneyGain

https://www.honeygain.com/

Yup, Honeygain supplies Oxylabs

That sounds like a terrible deal for the user.

You’d almost certainly see that traffic going across your network, right?

>You’d almost certainly see that traffic going across your network, right?

This is why their marketing campaigns are so aggressive. They completely rely on the unsophisticated masses, to whom a computer is a magical box of fairy dust that plays Netflix shows.

> completely rely on the unsophisticated masses, to whom a computer is a magical box of fairy dust that plays Netflix shows

And that’s perfectly fine - computers are a tool, enabling valuable usecases for everyone.

>And that’s perfectly fine - computers are a tool, enabling valuable usecases for everyone.

Of course. But the arbitrage of that knowledge leaves open all kinds of profitable businesses, including shady VPNs.

I fully agree that informed consent is necessary before funnelling connections for others, esp. given varying local laws around internet traffic responsibility.

However, I also think this is the only way to bypass streaming sites blocking VPNs - the whole reason for using such a service in the first place.

IMHO the shadiness is only around consent and not the means. Unfortunate, but such is reality.

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