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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

Wait, so I can have free movies and subvert the adtech business model at the same time? What's the catch?

Anyone can buy traffic on the proxy, not just click fraud, but cc fraud et al as well. Caveat emptor, it’s really not worth it compared to setting up a 3 USD per month Hetzner proxy box yourself, if you’re looking to pirate movies.

For some more context: We run a business based on data scraping and metered residential proxies have never been cheaper. Countries that used to be 10 USD/GB just ten years ago are down to 1 USD.

> Caveat emptor, it’s really not worth it compared to setting up a 3 USD per month Hetzner proxy box yourself, if you’re looking to pirate movies.

How does that work? Wouldn’t Hetzner know who you are (because you pay them), meaning that if you’re caught pirating on it they could just know it was you and hand you over?

And don’t think Herzner wouldn’t hand you over. My only experience with them was during a job, when an external company complained about something on a single section of a massive website (everything was legitimate, we weren’t doing anything remotely shady) and Hetzner straight up took the whole website down and demanded a change. Shoot first, ask later. I wasn’t directly involved with managing the website, but the whole thing soured me on Hetzner.

This is the bread and butter for commercial VPN services. The VPN knows who you are (maybe, unless you pay crypto/cash), and the rights-holders know your VPN address (from joining/logging a BitTorrent swarm, for instance), but the better providers keep no logs, and I'm guessing there's too many individuals to target effectively.

I've received a nasty letter from the ISP over BitTorrent (someone's phone joined my wifi, torrenting without my knowledge), but using a VPN seems sufficient. I think the Hetzener suggestion is a VPS for running the software stack. You could alternatively self host on hardware in your home.

Hetzner?! No, I would never use them if I wanted to host a pirate proxy myself. Very crude, trigger happy, operating in a country very cosy with all the police organisations.

100% this. Pirating in Germany is probably the stupidest thing one can do, because enforcement is done by individual lawyers via a process called Abmahnung. Courts (and therefore providers) are very friendly to those. Everyone knows someone who got "the letter".

Exactly my thought. For, say, $50/month I can get a second ISP to my house, host the proxy (and only that) on that link, and enjoy free movies. It is cheaper than having 2-3 streaming service subscriptions.

Or for $5/mo you could have a mullvad subscription and a vpn-aware bittorrent client that knows how to pause if the vpn drops.

True but that option got a lot worse when they disabled port forwarding.

You're underestimating the ease of use of these pirate boxes.

Also most of them are for pirating live TV. You can't watch live TV through Bittorrent, you just can't, it doesn't work that way. Sports fans need less than 5 seconds of latency relative to the loudest neighbor they can hear, or they'll hate your service.

These residential proxies are also used by scrapers. From scraping stores to scalp merchandise, to scrapers of data for AI training.

Sounds awesome, what's the catch?

You also get to run credit card fraud purchases through your home internet connection, such fun times we live in.

So what's the catch? Has anyone ever been arrested for proxying a fraudulent credit card transaction?

Probably not. But do you really want the hassle of explaining the proxy to the police when they get a report of CSAM content uploaded from your IP?

Has that ever happened?

It's a possibility. I don't know about CSAM but I know someone who was arrested for death threats sent to a politician after running a tor exit node. Eventually not charged, but he lost all his computing equipment for a couple of months

From 2009: https://archive.torproject.org/websites/lists.torproject.org...

Has anything changed since 2009?

> Eventually not charged

Theres your answer.

Considering the question was "has that every happened?" regarding the police getting a report and you having to explain the proxy to them, I guess you mean the answer is yes and your attitude is misplaced?

ehh, subvert is a stretch. But yes, you too can be a minor accessory to scams run by thieves to rob advertisers, with enriching the world's largest ad company as a side-effect. Not exactly a Robin Hood situation given that tons of the advertisers being robbed are just normal small developers trying to get their apps out there.

The more these small devs realize their ad spend is going to bots, the less they'll spend. Like the OP.

Once the word gets around, even small non-techy businesses will pick up on it.

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