Are ISPs responsible for bots having residential IPs or is this a user problem? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Maroon@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm trying to understand the bot problem in the internet and finding more ways to defend myself. One thing that I can't seem to understand is why most bots, scrapers and crawlers seem to have residential IPs.

Is it that ISPs are being paid by tech-bros to assign them these IPs?
Is it that residential devices have been hacked /contain malware that does this?
Is it trivial for companies to assign themselves residential IPs?
Paid volunteers are doing this for AI companies?

Or is there is some other reason for this?

Obviously this is a problem because one can rotate / cycle through residential IPs and if I aggressively block each offender in my logs permanently, then the next person assigned this IP who may be a legitimate user will be unable to access my site.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] communism@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago

if I aggressively block each offender in my logs permanently, then the next person assigned this IP who may be a legitimate user will be unable to access my site.

temp bans exist for this reason. You can use something like fail2ban for it, or that may be overkill for your purposes, but any mechanism that blocks the IP address for a short amount of time will work. My f2b blocks spammers' IP addresses for a day, and I don't see repeat bans which means the spammers aren't coming back on the same IP address, so the short ban works to stop a given spam attack.

this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026

55 points (92.3% liked)

Selfhosted

60723 readers

211 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

Be civil.
No spam.
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus

curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world