New security research offers a rare view inside residential proxy networks, which rely on apps that share a person's internet connection with someone else.
Blocking all traffic from regions of the world that you have no intention of servicing is a very valid cybersecurity layer.
I pretty regularly run into things that block access or make me complete captchas while I’m traveling. I may not be in a region you intend to service, but I’m (possibly) from a region you intend to service. Airplanes are a thing.
Buying access to a residential proxy to deal with that situation would be an extreme step for most people, but as a cybersecurity practice, it’s problematic.
Man I’m replying while visiting family in a non-western aligned occupied territory “overseas” to NA. I know. I region block anyways and VPN into Europe/NA when needed, where at least my traffic originates from a VPN’S AS where someone can be made to revoke my access if I abuse it.
Tell that to the guy in Lagos I had to report a few years ago for breaching one of my personal services. Nigerian Police have a dedicated Cybercrime division and they didn’t even reply to my report through their official channels. Sorry, but Nigeria went on the geoblocklist! I have a right to not expose myself to undue risk.
Sure, you have the right to manage your servers however you like… and I have the right to unfairly use you as a proxy for my rage at everyone who has ever broken the Internet’s global nature to make their server log files a little less noisy.
It’s not just log files - I was running a bad version of some software and suddenly my VPS was cryptomining and they tried to export common config directories. They got nothing and I cleaned it up but I’m not letting my VPS join a botnet and attack others. If the side effect of that is that Nigerians cannot read my person blog or access my self hosted services with 30 users I think this is ok.
I’ll happily accept your ire as I also wish the internet was generally safer and more open.
I pretty regularly run into things that block access or make me complete captchas while I’m traveling. I may not be in a region you intend to service, but I’m (possibly) from a region you intend to service. Airplanes are a thing.
Buying access to a residential proxy to deal with that situation would be an extreme step for most people, but as a cybersecurity practice, it’s problematic.
Man I’m replying while visiting family in a non-western aligned occupied territory “overseas” to NA. I know. I region block anyways and VPN into Europe/NA when needed, where at least my traffic originates from a VPN’S AS where someone can be made to revoke my access if I abuse it.
You have experienced the problem and you do it anyway?
Services that do region blocking also tend to block public VPNs. Breaking the internet like this is bad, and you should feel bad for doing it.
Tell that to the guy in Lagos I had to report a few years ago for breaching one of my personal services. Nigerian Police have a dedicated Cybercrime division and they didn’t even reply to my report through their official channels. Sorry, but Nigeria went on the geoblocklist! I have a right to not expose myself to undue risk.
Sure, you have the right to manage your servers however you like… and I have the right to unfairly use you as a proxy for my rage at everyone who has ever broken the Internet’s global nature to make their server log files a little less noisy.
It’s not just log files - I was running a bad version of some software and suddenly my VPS was cryptomining and they tried to export common config directories. They got nothing and I cleaned it up but I’m not letting my VPS join a botnet and attack others. If the side effect of that is that Nigerians cannot read my person blog or access my self hosted services with 30 users I think this is ok.
I’ll happily accept your ire as I also wish the internet was generally safer and more open.