Proxies using other proxies?

**Will.Spencer** · 11 December, 2008, 01:26 AM

I have been seeing a large number of submissions from "proxies" like http://www.myschoolproxy.cn.

When you browse a site through that proxy, it sends you to a completely different proxy.

I recently started deleting and banning these proxies, because:

To be fair to all proxy owners, we only allow one submission per proxy. As a result, we don't allow "feeder" sites like this.
The proxies these feeder sites were sending visitors to were down a large percentage of the time.

It occurred to me this morning to wonder whether this guy was hotlinking other peoples proxies and stealing their bandwidth. Comparing WHOIS records certainly supports that theory.

What do you guys think?

**Charles** · 11 December, 2008, 02:56 AM

Even the guy that bought Nathan's old network does that: Break School Filters - UnblockMoo

**trizi** · 11 December, 2008, 21:06 PM

Pretty scummy thing to do if they are doing what i think.

They can see there is alot of free traffic out there related to proxies and abuse this for the free money. They will have basically zero overheads for a operation like that.

Sounds like the next thing in the line from something i used to see alot last year, just people iframing your proxy and putting CPM ads on the top of every page.

That is unless they do actually own the other sites they send the traffic too but would rather have other gateway pages to their main sites perhaps just for seo or perhaps just to keep getting the fresh traffic and getting around submission rules on list sites.

**Ash** · 11 December, 2008, 21:51 PM

That's wicked.

Technically speaking, they're stealing bandwidth + also getting free traffic.

**Aquarezz** · 12 December, 2008, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by Ash

That's wicked.

Technically speaking, they're stealing bandwidth + also getting free traffic.

+ They get adsense earnings too

Greetz

**Tom** · 13 December, 2008, 08:39 AM

The proxy niche seems to attract some rather unsavory characters.

**Aquarezz** · 13 December, 2008, 08:53 AM

We just need to ignore them....
Go on with the good ones, leave out the bad ones

Greetz

**egk** · 16 December, 2008, 08:30 AM

I have seen this happening with my proxies as well, and just received an email this week from adsense-support threatening to ban my account because I am running adsense ads on a proxy that I have never even heard of! I replied to them that I have never even heard of the site, nor have anything to do with them.

I have hotlinking disabled. How can you tell if another site is stealing your bandwidth by sending their users through your proxy? How can you prevent this?

I guess I need to get around to creating my adsense list of allowed sites. Even when I do this it still does not solve the problem of other sites stealing my bandwidth?

**Will.Spencer** · 16 December, 2008, 12:04 PM

egk:

Which proxy script are you running?

Disallow Hotlinking on PHP Proxy
Prevent users from hotlinking through your proxy This will make your proxy use less bandwidth and...

How to Prevent Hotlinking in PHProxy

Hotlinking prevention for Phproxy, CGI-Proxy and Zelune