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Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

If you want to do something about the onslaught of AI crawling DDoSing every website on the internet: check to see if something you own is a residential proxy. Smart TVs are the most common culprit. Ideally, disconnect them from the internet entirely, but if not that at least uninstall unused apps.

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

There are basically two kinds of residential proxies: apps that act as a proxy service as their monetization model (sometimes in lieu of ads) and straight up malware compromising IoT devices. The former is very common on televisions, which are always on and easy to ignore.

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

While you're in there turning off motion smoothing, do this for your relatives or parents' tvs too. Any Tizen or Android TV app that isn't a streaming service you pay for has a pretty good chance to be a residential proxy. Apparently *one in four* Tizen apps had a residential proxy SDK.

4 reposts28 likes

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

This is such a problem that Samsung actually recently banned this stuff from Tizen, but I have no doubt in my mind that these companies are going to find ways around the ban. techcrunch.com/2026/08/03/s...

techcrunch.comSamsung bans smart TV apps that share users' internet connections with strangers | TechCrunchNew security research offers a rare view inside residential proxy networks, which rely on apps that share a person's internet connection with someone else.
Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

Most people don't even *know* that this residential proxy industry exists, but their existence is right now one of the main reasons why AI scraping is such a problem. Those are the people supplying the AI scrapers with more IP addresses than you can fail2ban.

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

And it's entirely unregulated, totally shady shit. Those companies will publicly claim that they have "consent" from the owners of these devices to use them for proxying, but the reality is that they 1. have no way of really knowing if app developers got effective consent, 2. no they didn't lol

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

These companies explicitly market themselves to people running AI scrapers; Bright Data, probably the biggest resproxy provider, leads their sales pitch with "experience seamless scraping". Every time you see that annoying Anubis loading bar, *these fuckers are to blame.*

Amyville Hoyrror
@amyhoy.bsky.social

whoa. we never installed anything on our samsung tv, do you know if this is solely an issue with third party apps? this is the first i heard of it and the article doesn't say

Bruno Dies
@brunodias.dev

as far as I know, it's only an issue with third-party apps but I can't guarantee that none of the apps that come preinstalled aren't doing this. it is a nightmare.