Other commenters have basically answered already, but to be clear Luminati is not the only provider, just the most infamous. It’s very easy to find others of greater or lesser reliability. Search “residential IPs proxy” and you’ll find many vendors.
But yes, the whole cottage industry is sketchy. Almost all providers are leasing users’ computer with outright malware or shady TOS. The savvy play is to release a free game, app or even SDK which will then opportunistically route requests from the control server through the user’s device.
Recaptcha solving APIs are frequently bundled with the more reliable and premium services of this kind. They introduce a lot of latency since there’s a real mechanical turk across the world solving it for you, but they basically work.
But yes, the whole cottage industry is sketchy. Almost all providers are leasing users’ computer with outright malware or shady TOS. The savvy play is to release a free game, app or even SDK which will then opportunistically route requests from the control server through the user’s device.
Recaptcha solving APIs are frequently bundled with the more reliable and premium services of this kind. They introduce a lot of latency since there’s a real mechanical turk across the world solving it for you, but they basically work.