Evidence register · Public record
Claims should leave a trail
"Ethically sourced", "verified every 5 minutes", and "99.9%+ uptime" are useful only when they can be checked. Follow the evidence from residential consent to research data, network health, and published policy.
IP Sourcing Ethics & Consent Model
Databay states that its residential supply is provided through opt-in partner applications: participants are shown a consent flow describing bandwidth sharing before traffic is enabled. This page is Databay's current sourcing disclosure, not an independent certification of every endpoint. Prospective customers with contractual sourcing requirements should request the applicable diligence materials and terms before purchasing.
- Opt-in partner appsIPs enter the pool only through applications that show a consent screen before any traffic is routed.
- Plain-language consentSharing is explained in one screen, not buried in a EULA.
- Paid participationUsers earn real money per gigabyte shared: suppliers, not products.
- Revocable anytimeClosing or uninstalling the app removes the device from the pool, with no penalty.
We do not source IPs from malware, rootkits, hidden installers, or SDKs that activate without a visible consent step. Because consent is revocable, pool membership fluctuates naturally. That churn is the cost of doing this honestly.
The demand side is policed too. This page is the long-form explanation behind every "ethically sourced" claim elsewhere on the site; these are the enforcement points behind it:
- EnforcedCustomers agree to the Acceptable Use Policy before they can place an order; it explicitly bars credential stuffing, fraud, piracy, CSAM and a long tail of other abuse patterns.
- EnforcedDatabay states that abuse reports are reviewed through its Trust & Safety contact.
- EnforcedAccounts that route abusive traffic through volunteers' connections are terminated.
First-Party Research
We publish original measurements, not aggregated marketing claims. The centerpiece is our residential IP reputation study: we took 1,000 residential IPs across 25 of the world's largest residential ASNs and ran every one of them through six free IP-reputation databases, plus a Cloudflare-Free cross-verification origin.
The malice-focused feeds (Tor exit list, Spamhaus DROP, ASN-drop) flagged none of the sample; Spamhaus ZEN listings were dominated by PBL policy codes: the "this is a residential line" designation, not a malice verdict. The same open-methodology standard applies to the free proxy list: every entry is re-probed every 5 minutes, and stale entries are dropped rather than left to inflate counts.
Verify our numbers yourself:
- residential-ip-reputation-2026-05.csv: the /24-redacted capture, six reputation feeds per IP.Download CSV
Download the raw dataset
- Method, scoring and per-ASN results of the reputation leaderboard.Read it
Read the full study
- The probe pipeline behind the 5-minute refresh, documented end to end.Read it
Free proxy list methodology
The Databay Research Team
Content on this site is researched, written and maintained by the Databay Research Team, the engineering group that operates the proxy network itself. The people who run the probe pipelines, the reputation scans and the free-proxy dataset are the same people who write the guides about them. We publish as a team rather than under individual bylines, and we put the methodology where anyone can audit it instead of putting a face where no one can.
Databay Research Team
Engineering & Research
The team's working output is public: the technical guides, the IP-reputation study, and the probe-pipeline methodology. Judge the work, not a headshot.
Network Status
We publish real-time network health at status.databay.com: uptime, incident history and per-service availability. The network targets 99.9%+ uptime; the status page is where that figure is continuously kept honest.
Compliance & Policies
Nothing is gated behind a sales call; the complete policy set is published:
- What customers may and may not do with the network.Read it
Acceptable Use Policy
- Our anti-money-laundering stance, in full.Read it
AML Policy
- How and when we verify customer identity.Read it
KYC Policy
- In plain terms, before you buy.Read it
Refund Policy
- Published Trust & Safety contact and escalation instructions.Read it
Report abuse
- Terms, privacy, SLA and the rest.Read it
All legal documents
Independent Signals
Don't take our word for any of this: the third-party surfaces are linked directly, unfiltered.
Latest from the blog
Setup guides, benchmarks, and research notes on proxies and web data collection.
Free Proxy List Benchmark: 2,911 Proxies Tested
Results from a June 11, 2026 test of 2,911 entries across seven free proxy lists, covering availability, HTTPS, latency, stability, and study limits.
Databay Research Team
Residential IP Reputation: 1,000 Published Observations
What 1,000 redacted route observations across 25 ASNs show about DNSBL labels, Tor and DROP checks, network classification, and dataset limits.
Databay Research Team
Headless Browser Detection Signals: Defensive Testing
How sites combine browser, rendering, network, session, and behavior signals—and how to test them defensively without treating a fingerprint as identity.
Databay Research TeamVerify us, then try us
Read the policies, download the dataset, and check live status before putting the network itself to the test.
Every register entry above links to its primary source.