I was using their service and was counting the data received (bytes) in my python script. And I was billed 5 times more.
1 Answer
That's an entertaining story for everyone to know that they're acting unfair:) Not sure where to write it, SO might be the other possible site. TL;DR: don't use packetstream (PS for brevity in the explanation).
So I've asked their support, and they've answered that they count uncompressed traffic because it's what goes through the system, and blablabla.
Which sounds very odd to me. At least I see the response traffic between their server and my script is compressed (gzip or brotli, whatever I ask in the HTTP request). So I've installed their application for selling traffic to have a look.
It's a docker container, and I've snooped at the respective docker interfaces. There I've seen that the alien traffic going through it is TLS-protected between PS server and this container, and going out without any modification, and the response traffic from the end webserver is naturally compressed. The forwarded traffic back to the PS server has the same size (although encrypted). Here they bill for nothing, caveat emptor.
The farther the scarier. I've seen occasional (fairly rare) HTTP traffic going through the app. And since it's not encrypted, I can see the headers. Authorization holds username:password for the PS proxy user. So you can use it to deplete their PS balance, and since they like to autobill your card, eventually you may lose a lot of money from the card as well.