This is amusing to read because they largely/all seem to be AT&T mobile IPs, which get allocated from an absurdly sized pool with barely working geoip.

Well AT&T does own an entire /8 block (12.0.0.0/8) so they certainly have plenty to choose from

I guess for clarification what I mean is mobile pools are generally heavily mixed/NATed/etc all over the place, and the reddit OP claims that they're all hidden VPNs or something due to geo - mobile IP space geo literally does not work half the time and is an absolute mess. They're almost certainly just hotspots or an LTE SIM attached to the cameras with nothing else hiding it.

I use nordvpn that I purchased with a credit card. Before using it I would get notices from my ISP for pirating but not anymore.

As far as I'm concerned it just makes me not the lowest hanging fruit and that's good enough for me. Even if they wouldn't cut off my service from those notices I consider it worth $50 a yearfor peace of mind. Plus it comes in handy for getting around some geo restrictions.

Case in point: thinking that any of this is relevant in a thread about people logging into government-setup cameras.

Btw, you might want to look into what came out of this story: https://medium.com/@derek./how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-... — it's mostly guesswork but I'm not sure how a company buys 32 million residential ips otherwise.

I have special insight into this situation (including both companies named within) and it is exactly as the article implies. These people are printing money on the backs of regular (unsuspecting) people, and nobody asks questions because of the amount of money involved. To be quite honest, this is what I imagine the fine line must look like, which exists between things that don't need regulation and things that do. That fine, fuzzy line of "These people are obviously up to some hinky bullshit and lying-not-lying to everybody involved".