Your Phone is My Proxy: Detecting and Understanding Mobile Proxy Networks

Abstract

Residential proxy has emerged as a service gaining popularity recently, in which proxy providers relay their customers' network traffic through millions of proxy peers under their control. We find that many of these proxy peers are mobile devices, whose role in the proxy network can have significant security implications since mobile devices tend to be privacyand resource-sensitive. However, little effort has been made so far to understand the extent of their involvement, not to mention how these devices are recruited by the proxy network and what security and privacy risks they may pose.