Why we dropped bandwidth sharing

We dropped bandwidth-sharing SDKs as a product path. Some free browsers fund themselves by selling your last mile: a residential-looking exit out of your Windows box, rented to strangers. That model sometimes arrives bundled next to an antidetect drawer. We will not ship it.

This is a privacy note, not a pricing coupon. Free here means owned ad slots in chrome we draw. It does not mean your ISP line becomes inventory. The page lives under Privacy because the leftover is traffic you did not choose.

What those SDKs actually do

They install a background client. Other people’s requests exit through your network. You might get a few dollars. They get a pool. Your ISP sees weird traffic. Your neighborhood IP picks up a reputation you did not earn. Consent UX is often a checkbox in an installer.

That is a cousin of the worst residential sourcing. It is also a cousin of malware-kit exits. I will not put it next to a product that holds Ads Manager cookies, even in a separate process.

How we fund 0.1 instead

Dashboard ads. What leaves this machine names the feed and the iframes. Update channel is packages, not a peer-to-peer mesh. No Honeygain-style module in the desktop repo.

Cloud browsers and cloud phones rent someone else’s machine. Bandwidth sharing rents yours. Cloud browser risk and cloud phones versus local Windows are the other direction. If a vendor is breached is worse if the vendor also routed stranger traffic through you.

LocalStorage is still in your profile. Bandwidth sharing would have been in the whole OS path. Different layer, still a leftover I refuse.

I have watched “free antidetect” installers bundle a bandwidth client with a checkbox already ticked. The user wanted isolated cookies. They also became an exit for strangers. ISP abuse tickets follow. Neighborhood reputation follows. Consent was a skipped screen.

Our installer is NSIS for Windows x64. It may be unsigned. SmartScreen may warn. That is a different annoyance. It is not a silent last-mile SDK. If a fork of this app adds sharing, it is not the product I am describing.

Dashboard ads still use your connection to fetch creatives. That is you loading a page, not you proxying someone else’s crawl. Keep those sentences separate when a comment thread mashes them together.

Pushback I hear: “opt-in sharing could fund the app without ads.” It still turns the operator PC into inventory. Ads in chrome we draw are a page load. Bandwidth sharing is other people’s traffic on your ISP. I will keep the footer ad. I will not keep the SDK.

FAQ

Could you add it later as an opt-in?

I would still argue no. Opt-in SDKs in this category have a habit of becoming default. The product is a local launcher, not a last-mile marketplace.

Do dashboard ads use my bandwidth the same way?

They load creatives in the operator UI. They do not turn your PC into someone else’s proxy. Different beast.

Is the app still free?

Yes. Download MaskWright. Read the leave-the-machine list so “free” is not a mystery.

Could ads in the dashboard use as much bandwidth as sharing?

No. Ads fetch creatives for you. Sharing would proxy other people’s sessions through your ISP. Different leftover. I will keep the footer slot. I will not keep the SDK.

If a fork of this app adds sharing, it is not the 0.1 product I am describing. Read the installer list twice.

We would rather show a footer ad than sell your line. If that trade feels worse than a $29 seat, buy a seated cloud product. Do not ask us to quietly become an exit.