During this time she hosted computers for overseas IT workers — who were posing as American citizens and residents — to ensure the devices had local IP addresses, making them appear to be in the US.
Why would you need physical laptops for this? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have a server hosting a VPN?
Services can differentiate between data centers and residential IP addresses. If your IP is from an ASN owned by digitalocean, it’s very likely they are using a proxy or a VPN.
Sure but, if it’s between setting up a bunch of laptops for people to proxy through or whatever, or running a VPN server from your home they can use instead, that would be the same IP.
Why would you need physical laptops for this? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have a server hosting a VPN?
Well yeah but if she was smart she wouldn’t have been running an obvious fraud from her own home.
Services can differentiate between data centers and residential IP addresses. If your IP is from an ASN owned by digitalocean, it’s very likely they are using a proxy or a VPN.
Sure but, if it’s between setting up a bunch of laptops for people to proxy through or whatever, or running a VPN server from your home they can use instead, that would be the same IP.