Hacker News Reader

>Are these botnets? Are AI companies mass-funding criminal malware companies?

Without a doubt some of them are botnets. AI companies got their initial foothold by violating copyright en masse with pirated textbook dumps for training data, and whatnot. Why should they suddenly develop scruples now?

It used to be Hola VPN which would let you use someone else’s connection and in the same way someone could use yours which was communicated transparently, that same hola client would also route business users. Im sure many other free VPN clients do the same thing nowadays.

I have seen it claimed that's a way of monetizing free phone apps. Just bundle a proxy and get paid for that.

A recent HN thread about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746156