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Comment by NooneAtAll3 | Hacker News Reader

from what I see there are 2 solutions:

1) ban TV-proxy-as-a-service - straight up go to every representative there is and start pushing and lobbying and everything to stop spammers from distributing over non-computer devices, especially legally

2) make old commits more expensive to access than new ones. Legit users are not going to access those much, so they can pay the time. I assume diverse (unpredictable?) difficulty can also make spam pulling harder

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> straight up go to every representative there is

In every country of the world? I think you might have a significantly easier time convincing Samsung and LG to ban this via their T&C.

Good news: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/lg-to-ban-residential-pr...

Only a few countries would be enough, the rest will get banned until they pass apply similar policies.

If there was a way of detecting the proxy SDKs, it would be a simple matter of banning the device. Or at least naming and shaming the apps that use them.

I'm sure there are ways of detecting residential proxy clients that are reasonably effective. I'm equally sure that the people in possession of those techniques (thinking CDN providers, big social networks with public links, newsrooms) are unlikely to share their secret sauce in public. Doing that loses a competitive edge in cost-of-hosting, and as soon as you go public the residential proxy makers can adapt.

There's JA4 fingerprinting (and the JA4+ suite), but still not a surefire way of detecting. Plus the metadata for the signatures has to be constantly maintained and updated.

I would think that residential proxying would be illegal already, as it is a network intrusion. The trick is chasing down the offenders, proving their actions did harm, and getting them to pay. None of those steps are easy, even if there are laws to assist. Otherwise, spam would be a solved problem.

Is it still an intrusion if the user accepted the shrinkwrap TOS of an app that trades them “free TV” in exchange for allowing that app to operate a proxy (via an “app monetization” SDK) on their network?

Yeah, no one actually agrees to all of the individual terms in EULAs. That’s the first sign that the law will be nearly useless to address any aspect of these problems. It is already one-sided, and that side is not a friend to the consumer or general public.

It isn't illegal, there is no law against "network intrusion" which is a term you just made up, and if it was a real term it probably wouldn't cover this. There are laws against things like "unauthorized access to a protected computer system".

Patayto, potahto. You care to explain how a “network intrusion” is not an “unauthorized access to a protected computer system”?

What's a network intrusion?

Good luck enforcing the law against a company whose entire business model is to piggyback residential-proxy-as-a-service over the shitty FNQQOIIWKNURQB brand $60 projectors they flip on Amazon. You call them out, they’ll just say they stopped doing it and go on with business as usual.

3) just track down the people and arrest them. DDoS is already a felony, and residential proxies aren't untraceable to law enforcement.

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