Comment by somehnguy
1 day ago
In the last few months I've seen many advertisements for a device they call the "Super Box" - it's essentially an (Android based?) IPTV device with every channel imaginable. The people I know with them paid around $300 and there isn't a monthly fee.
I have a hunch they're trading free TV for becoming a residential proxy unknowingly. Would love to capture network traffic from one and see what's really going on.
The fact that people are willing to buy these super sketchy devices and plug them into their networks without a second thought is kinda scary.
Well didn't lookup Super Box but I assume it's less sketchy than you image.
It probably just pulls from something like https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv and so the provider of Super Box doesn't have to maintain pretty much anything or use any of their own bandwidth. So the $300 minus the cost of the hardware is the profit and they don't have real reoccurring costs.
I don't believe so. These boxes provide access to premium TV channels and live sports, not just public broadcasting.
On tiktok, "superboxes" get pushed but hard, for $2-300 a device.
Premium TV channels and live sports have publicly accessible IPTV streams, though. Undocumented != nonpublic.
The pirate IPTV industry has a pirating problem of its own
I've never seen a $300 one but I've seen $70 ones. I don't think they're nefarious in that sense, but these boxes are usually scams.
They come preloaded with a pirate iptv service that only works for 1-2 months then they ask you to pay something like $70/year to keep watching. There's tons of providers for these IPTV services so bundling them with the boxes is a way to make it easy to access while gaining subscriptions, you can just buy a cheap android TV box yourself, install the apk and get a cheaper IPTV provider.
Most of these boxes/providers don't last more than a couple years as authorities tend to go after them when they get too big. My dad uses them to watch portuguese TV--it would be impossible to watch certain channels outside the country otherwise--and in the past 10 years he changed provider 3-4 times.
Similarly most fire stick pirate streaming and side loading tutorials use an app called “downloader” which includes a URL shortener. Users are given an 8 digit “downloader code” and most blindly download and sideload APKs on their device. Probably a field day for anyone wanting to bundle and distribute malware.
https://troypoint.com/best-downloader-codes/
These have been a thing for a while - check your local Craigslist for "fully loaded" Fire sticks or other streaming TV devices. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you're correct - these devices are marketed to technically unsophisticated users, by vendors who have every incentive to maximize profit.
They’re generally not selling a million of these or even tens of thousands of these, so setting up residential proxy software on the boxes would almost certainly not be worth the time spent.
I wouldn't expect the installers to be setting a proxy network themselves, but rather acting as an affiliate for an existing network and collecting commissions from that.
Alternatively, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the apps installed on these devices have their own embedded malware - the operators of the pirate TV networks are looking to get paid, too.
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I've also seen these marketed as "Kodi boxes".
The value of a single residential proxy is so low that the scheme you’re proposing is utterly ridiculous.