US residential proxies are the bane of the internet. They’re the major source of social media manipulation and spam. A residential proxy runs someone else’s traffic through a real home internet connection, so it looks like a normal person on Comcast or AT&T. Almost no one intentionally runs one on behalf of bad actors, they’ve been tricked or hacked. Usually it’s one of a few things: A free VPN app reselling your bandwidth. A proxy SDK buried in some free game. Malware on a computer, router, or smart TV. LG recently moved to ban proxy apps from its smart TVs after researchers found that over 42% of its apps could covertly turn your TV into a proxy.