Why are there public open proxies?

bartosimpsonio · Feb 6, 2015

I use publicly available proxies all the time. I scrape them or use some of the subscriptions I've bought along the years.

My question is : why does any company or individual keep an open proxy out there?

Seems to be a complete waste of resources and a risky thing, considering the proxy could be used for illegal stuff.

Been doing black hat SEO for years, but I never found an appropriate answer to that. Personally I wouldn't ever put an open proxy out there.

proxygo · Feb 6, 2015

in some cases there honey pot traps, other case not configured servers where the
ports have not been secured correctly, and possibly a few just left open for the hell of it..

mexela · Feb 6, 2015

nobody put is with intention
the open proxies are usually hacked/bad configured computers/routers

proxygo · Feb 7, 2015

mexela said:
nobody put is with intention
the open proxies are usually hacked/bad configured computers/routers

you would be surprised what people do for deliberate intention

akacash · Feb 7, 2015

There's any number of reasons, including the ones already listed here. The 2 major ones would be misconfigured config files, or honey potting. The honey potting isn't just done by anti-spam groups, some people will deliberately setup open proxies and then share the hell out of them on purpose to see see the traffic and methods that the proxies are used for. You'd be surprised what you can learn from something like that.

I'm not sure why, but some ISP's also leave open proxies on a lot of IPs for some reason. I'm assuming it's for customers maybe to use when they're not at home maybe or idk why, but there's thousands of open proxies on individual ISP's if you know what ports to scan on.

loopline · Feb 7, 2015

akacash said:
There's any number of reasons, including the ones already listed here. The 2 major ones would be misconfigured config files, or honey potting. The honey potting isn't just done by anti-spam groups, some people will deliberately setup open proxies and then share the hell out of them on purpose to see see the traffic and methods that the proxies are used for. You'd be surprised what you can learn from something like that.

I'm not sure why, but some ISP's also leave open proxies on a lot of IPs for some reason. I'm assuming it's for customers maybe to use when they're not at home maybe or idk why, but there's thousands of open proxies on individual ISP's if you know what ports to scan on.

Yes, I have made a lot of cash over the years by watching other people (not with proxies) but its like the inside view, you could see all the best black hat techniques and garner great ideas from clever minds.

Why are there public open proxies?

bartosimpsonio

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proxygo

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mexela

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proxygo

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akacash

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loopline

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