Comment by iudqnolq
3 years ago
I deliberately chose Mullvad because their IPs are on those blacklists.
My impression is that the only way for an established, non-tiny VPN provider to have clean IPs is if they're buying residential proxys. My impression is that the only way to make the residential proxy business work at scale is either malware or unwanted misleading bundled crapware. I don't feel comfortable benefiting from a service that, at best, relies on tricking less tech savvy people into installing crapware.
There are ways to get residential proxies in a more ethical way these days. Some apps/extensions are now offering money for network access/network usage and they are open about what they are doing. They pay you with cash in exchange for your network, no covert VPN or sneaky SDK in unrelated apps.
I think even the more ethically dubious providers are shifting towards that model. Which makes sense since they have to pay anyways.
I'm skeptical even those services properly inform users about the risks and downsides. I also suspect those services turn a blind eye to resellers violating their consent policies
Alternatively, the users are well aware and embrace the plausible deniability it lends their own traffic.
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see: https://earnapp.com/