Post #1570880
2026-01-28 19:15 UTC
@HunterZ @osm_tech this is actually quite common. Mobile advertising SDKs for games, background apps, etc include residential scraping proxy functionality that they can sell to the highest bidder, and then when scrapers want to avoid restrictions they can pay a fraction of a penny to send their requests via your phone. Millions of people use apps with this built in and have no idea. Most websites don't want to ban the residential scrapers because it can hurt growth.
Replies (1)
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@olbohlen@norden.social 2026-01-28 21:34
@ryanprior @HunterZ @osm_tech I have that scraping also on my private webserver and it forced me to make a whole bunch of content private. yet still the botnet scrapes onto it and gets 404s now. Every single request from a different IP...