ABCProxy.com (ABC S5 Proxy): the company, its operators and its end

ABCProxy, called ABC S5 Proxy on its first pages, sold residential proxies from abcproxy.com between November 2022 and January 2026. Its contract never named a company. Its footer named three Hong Kong companies in turn, the last of them Prince Legend Limited, which also owns the ABC S5PROXY trademark in China. On 28 January 2026 Google named ABC Proxy among 13 brands it says are "controlled by the actors behind IPIDEA". The next day the site stopped serving pages, and the registry now lists the domain with the Registrar of Last Resort, pointed at a sinkhole. The record follows in date order, and each item names its source. The alternatives are on our ABCProxy alternatives page.

ABCProxy at a glance

We read every record on 10 October 2026, most of them from our server in St. Louis: the registry and certificate logs, the Internet Archive's copies of abcproxy.com from 2002 to 2026, China's trademark register through TMview, Google's posts, a US court docket and the browser extension stores. CourtListener and DocumentCloud refused our server, so we read those two from our office.

The story, oldest first

A solid marker is a record we read in a register, an archive, a court file or a public post. A hollow one is ABCProxy's own claim.

Before the proxies: a Spanish program and a name for sale

The name is twenty years older than the shop. Verisign's registry dates abcproxy.com to 31 March 2002. In June 2002 the address forwarded to a page of IDESOFT, a software maker in Soria, Spain. Its product was a Windows program called ABC Proxy, which let a whole local network share one internet line, with a firewall and a cache.

That use did not last. A copy from May 2006 reads: "This domain name expired on Mar 30, 2006." Over the next years the name carried free proxy lists, then a make-money offer called the Proxy Wealth System in 2010, then WiFi antenna kits in 2011 and 2012.

From 2018 the name was for sale. A copy of August 2018 carries the title "AbcProxy.com Aged Domain Name For Sale". From September 2020 to January 2022 the archive shows a sale page in Chinese and English that invites offers, under a copyright line of 4.cn. It does not show who bought the name, or when, or for how much.

One record from those years is easy to misread. The first certificate for abcproxy.com dates from 20 April 2020, while the name was still on sale. It does not date the proxy business.

November 2022: ABC S5 Proxy, sold as a 911 replacement

The shop appears in the autumn of 2022. Certificates for five servers under s5.abcproxy.com, with names such as authapi and resapi, were issued on 24 October 2022. On 29 October the archive found an empty app shell. By 29 November the page had a title: "Top Global Residential IP Proxy,Best Proxy Solutions| ABC S5 Proxy".

Its description already made the claim the shop kept to the end: "more than 200 million IP addresses covering more than 190 countries". The first full page, archived on 3 February 2023, sold SOCKS5 residential IPs one by one, "Only $0.04/IP!". The same page said "70M+ residential IPs live online", while its description still said 200 million.

The same page pitched the shop as a replacement: "The perfect 911 replacement", and "The best alternative to the 911 S5". A page archived on 6 August 2023 went further. "ABC Proxy is functionally compatible with 911.re," it read, and it "has served 190,000 users". Blog posts of late 2023 carried titles built on the 911 S5 name.

911 S5 was a residential proxy service built on a botnet. On 28 May 2024 the US Treasury sanctioned three people over it, and three companies owned or controlled by one of them. It called the 911 S5 botnet "a malicious service that compromised victim computers", with about 19 million IP addresses. No record we read ties ABCProxy to the people behind 911 S5. The link is in ABCProxy's own advertising.

A contract with no company in it

ABCProxy's legal pages never said who was selling. The Terms of Service open with "Welcome to ABC Proxy." and name no company, no address and no court. Parts read like a template from another trade: one clause covers "advertisement services", another "our refusal to host your domain name". The only law they cite sits in the abuse clause: "the laws of the United States of America or the State of Illinois".

The privacy policy says: "In all cases mentioned in this Policy ABCproxy is your personal data controller." It is dated "October 20, 2022" and lists "identifying documents (driver license/ID/passport)" among the data it collects and keeps. The refund policy calls the service "ABC S5 Proxy" and says: "Please note that all payments are final."

The texts did not change while we could follow them. The terms and the privacy policy read the same in March 2024, May 2025 and January 2026: we compared checksums of the decoded text.

Three companies in the footer

Where the contract was silent, the footer spoke. From July to October 2023 every monthly copy of the homepage we read ends with "HONGKONG GUANGLING MDT INFOTECH LIMITED" and an address on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.

The About page of 20 January 2024 names another firm: "ROME BELDEN LIMITED", in a commercial building on Tonkin Street in Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon. In the copies we read, the About page names none from March to September 2024, and the homepage none from November 2023 to December 2024.

From January 2025 to the last copy of January 2026 the footer names a third: "PRINCE LEGEND LIMITED", Room 1602 of The Phoenix, 23 Luard Road, Wan Chai.

Prince Legend Limited is the one name with a second record behind it. China's trademark office registered the mark ABC S5PROXY on 28 June 2023, as number 68711058. The applicant reads "王子传说有限公司 PRINCE LEGEND LIMITED". It filed on 5 December 2022, six days after the first archived ABC S5 Proxy page.

We found no ABCPROXY mark in any office that TMview covers, the US and EU offices among them. Nor did we read the Hong Kong register. Its search service loads a captcha, and a company's particulars cost HK$22 a search, while our rule is never to buy. The owners and directors of all three firms are not on any record we hold.

Growth, by its own numbers

The headline pool claim held for three years: "more than 200 million" on the first page in 2022, "Over 200 million real IPs in 190+ locations" on the last in January 2026. That last homepage gave two more numbers. Its SOCKS5 product offered "over 350 million residential IP addresses", and another card "100M+ residential, datacenter, and mobile IPs". The customer claim rose too. The homepage read "TRUSTED BY 50,000+ CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE" from February 2024 to January 2025, and "Trusted by 100K+ Global Clients" by July 2025.

From September 2023 the site also said: "Trusted by Thousands of Businesses Since 2018". The archive tells another story. In 2018 the name was an "Aged Domain Name For Sale", and the first proxy page dates from November 2022.

In July 2025 the homepage called its pool "200M+ ethically sourced" and "Compliant with GDPR & CCPA". No page we read named an app or a partner through which those IPs joined.

The certificate logs show how fast the shop grew. They hold 34 entries for abcproxy.com and its servers in 2022 and 37 in 2023, then 84 in 2024 and 168 in 2025. The last one is dated 24 January 2026.

Prices fell in the last months. In January 2024 the smallest residential package cost $15 for 5 GB, which is $3 a gigabyte, valid for 30 days. In January 2025 the same 5 GB cost $16.50. A first purchase of 5 GB cost $9 a month in January 2026, or $1.80 a gigabyte.

January 2026: Google names ABC Proxy

On 27 January 2026 Google's lawyers wrote to a federal judge in New York. The case, Google LLC v. Does 1-25, concerned the BadBox 2.0 botnet. It had ended in September 2025 with a default judgment and a permanent injunction. The letter said the most significant proxy business of that enterprise was "known as IPIDEA". Its network, the letter said, included "at least 19 other purportedly legitimate residential proxy businesses".

These businesses, the letter went on, "share account information, name server pairs, corporate records, and web services." Google would serve the injunction on "the registrars servicing domains associated with the Proxy Services", among them "domains that advertise proxy services". The list of businesses and domains was filed under seal. Google amended it three times, the last on 25 February 2026.

The next day Google's Threat Intelligence Group published its account. It says that many well-known proxy brands "are controlled by the actors behind IPIDEA", and lists 13 that it calls "ostensibly independent". ABC Proxy, at abcproxy.com, is the third on the list.

The post also lists files for other researchers to look for. One of them is an "ABC S5 Proxy Client". Among the signer names it lists is "PRINCE LEGEND LIMITED", of Hong Kong Island.

These are Google's statements, not a court's findings. The public court papers do not name ABCProxy, and the post does not say which certificate signed which file. The footer, the trademark and the certificate all carry the name Prince Legend Limited. Yet no record we read gives a number that proves they are one company.

One general line of the post bears on ABCProxy's advertising: "While many residential proxy providers state that they source their IP addresses ethically, our analysis shows these claims are often incorrect or overstated."

29 January 2026: the site goes dark

The archive dates the end to the hour. On 28 January 2026 at 14:48 GMT, abcproxy.com still served its files through Cloudflare. On 29 January at 08:58 GMT the same site answered "404 Not Found". From March to July 2026 the copies of the site and its subdomains are empty answers.

The registry shows where the name went. It now lists abcproxy.com with the Stichting Registrar of Last Resort Foundation, on name servers of Shadowserver's sinkhole. Its record last changed on 21 February 2026. The registrant's details are redacted, except for "CA, US". On 10 October 2026 the name and its subdomains pointed at ten addresses at Leaseweb and Hurricane Electric, and the site did not answer.

Of the other 12 domains on Google's list, one more sits with the same registrar: doorvpn.com. The domain tabproxy.com points at name servers marked "blocked for abuse", in a record last changed on 28 January 2026. Five more were on hold at their registrars on 10 October 2026, and four had been registered anew in July and August 2026.

Not everything went dark. On 10 October 2026 the Chrome Web Store still listed the ABC Chrome Extension as "Featured", with 3,000 users and a last update of 2 February 2024. It is "Offered by ABCProxy Inc.", a name we found in no register we searched, and the listing says its developer "has not identified itself as a trader". Mozilla still listed the Firefox version, created on 17 August 2023.

Who ABCProxy is connected to

Two of the three addresses are in Wan Chai, the third in Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon. Our page on Google's action against IPIDEA covers the other brands on the list, and who owns your proxy provider maps other groups.

In court and in filings

No court file we read names ABCProxy. CourtListener's index holds no document with "abcproxy" or "Prince Legend" in it. The one case we found that bears on the brand is Google LLC v. Does 1-25, in the Southern District of New York, number 1:25-cv-04503.

Google's letters of 27 January to 25 February 2026 concern the domains of IPIDEA's "Proxy Services", but their lists are sealed. The defendants are 25 unnamed parties. The case closed with a default judgment on 18 September 2025, and Google filed the letters under that judgment. The last entry we read is the letter of 25 February 2026.

What ABCProxy sold, in short

ABCProxy sold rotating residential traffic by the gigabyte, SOCKS5 residential IPs one by one, unlimited plans by the day, and static residential and datacenter proxies. In January 2026 a first 5 GB purchase cost $9 a month and the largest plans $0.60 a gigabyte. SOCKS5 IPs cost $0.045 each, and the unlimited plan $79 a day. Buyers could download a client for Windows, Mac and Android, named ABC S5 Proxy on Windows, or use the browser extension.

The fine print was short. There was no trial and no refund, since "all payments are final". Orders of $3,000 or more paid no fee in cryptocurrency, and the help centre explained how to buy coins on Coinbase to pay. The privacy policy let the shop ask for a passport or a driving licence.

On where its IPs came from, the homepage of July 2025 said "ethically sourced", and the early pages "real IP addresses from real users". It named no app and no partner.

What customers report over time

We could not chart a score. The archive holds no copy of ABCProxy's Trustpilot page, and Trustpilot's live page refused our server. ABCProxy's own page data declared a rating of 4.8 from 1,000 reviews.

Its homepage quoted seven five-star Trustpilot reviews, all posted between March and September 2023. Later archive copies show four of the seven gone. The archive does not say who removed them, or why.

Is ABCProxy legit?

It sold a real service for more than three years, and the certificate logs hold 332 entries for its domain. Beyond that, the record is thin. Its contract never named a seller, and its footer named three firms in eighteen months. No register we could read names an owner. Google says the brand was controlled by the actors behind IPIDEA, and since 29 January 2026 there has been nothing to buy.

If you are looking elsewhere

• If you used ABCProxy, check whether your next provider is on Google's list of 28 January 2026: TabProxy, LunaProxy, PIA S5 Proxy and nine more names share it with ABC Proxy. Our page on Google's action lists them all.
• If you held a balance, its refund policy said "all payments are final", and the site has answered nothing since January 2026.
• If you need a small amount to start again, one gigabyte of HProxy Lite costs $0.50/GB, bought without a plan, and an unused balance does not expire. Our ABCProxy alternatives page compares the options, and the free proxy checker tests any HTTP or SOCKS proxy you still hold.

What we could not find out

1. Who owns Prince Legend Limited, and who runs it. The Hong Kong register charges HK$22 for a company's particulars, behind a captcha, and we buy nothing.
2. Whether the three firms of the footer are related, and why the name changed twice in eighteen months.
3. Whether abcproxy.com is on Google's sealed list, and who asked for the move to the Registrar of Last Resort. The registrant now shows only "CA, US".
4. Where its IPs came from. It said "ethically sourced" and named no app.
5. Whether the business goes on under another name. Domains with similar names exist; no record ties any of them to ABCProxy.
6. Which company took its card payments. No page we read names one.
7. Its Trustpilot score over time. No archive copy of the profile exists, and the live page refuses our server.

We bought nothing and installed nothing: our rule is to read and never to buy. Court papers, registry records and store listings change, so we will check these records again by 10 January 2027.

Sources

• Verisign and the Registrar of Last Resort: registry records for abcproxy.com and the 12 other domains on Google's list. Certificate logs (crt.sh). Read 10 October 2026.
• Internet Archive: abcproxy.com from 2002 to 2026 (homepage, About page, terms, privacy and refund policies, pricing, the 911 page, documentation), idesoft.com/abcproxy in 2002, and the Trustpilot reviews ABCProxy quoted. Read 10 October 2026.
• Google Threat Intelligence Group: "No Place Like Home Network: Disrupting the World's Largest Residential Proxy Network", 28 January 2026. Google's consumer post on the same action, 30 January 2026. Read 10 October 2026.
• US District Court for the Southern District of New York: Google LLC v. Does 1-25, 1:25-cv-04503, letter of 27 January 2026 (ECF 45, the public copy on DocumentCloud) and the docket through CourtListener. Read 10 October 2026.
• US Department of the Treasury: press release jy2375 of 28 May 2024, the sanctions over the 911 S5 botnet. Read 10 October 2026.
• China National Intellectual Property Administration, through TMview: the mark ABC S5PROXY, 68711058. Read 10 October 2026.
• OpenCorporates company search. Read 10 October 2026.
• Chrome Web Store: ABC Chrome Extension. Mozilla Add-ons: ABCProxy-Extension. GitHub: the ABCproxy account. Read 10 October 2026.
• Our own checks from our server: the addresses and networks behind abcproxy.com, 10 October 2026.