Recently, I noticed a significant increase in requests from the hostnames like this google-proxy-00-000-00-000.google.com in my log files. Upon investigation, I discovered that this hostname is commonly used for previews in Google Search. However, this explanation did not seem to apply to my situation. Additionally, the source of this information is 10 years old. The received requests from those proxy domains also contained a regular browser user agent string and not an official Google user agent to identify a specific product or service. Further research revealed that Google Chrome is experimenting with hiding the IP address through IP Protection.
I am concerned about this development because routing traffic through Google’s servers may complicate efforts to block DDoS attacks or identify fraudulent activity.
In response to these concerns, Google is considering measures such as requiring authentication with the proxy for users of this feature, preventing the linking of web requests to specific accounts by proxies, and implementing rate-limiting to safeguard against DDoS attacks.
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