MobileHop – Behind The Scenes!

If you haven’t already checked out some of our other blog posts then please read these…
Who is Kiet Chau?
Who runs Vivid-Hosting, LLC?
What happened with MobileHop & ProxyGuys?
Who owns MobileHop?

Quick recap…. Kiet Chau who is an engineer for Qualcomm started Vivid-Hosting around 2005 which provides IP transit in the Los Angeles region. In 2022 he formed MobileHop along with Benjamin Sanders, Phong (Bee) Nguyen, Gary Chaboya & Marcus Mamolen.

MobileHop provides 4G/5G mobile proxy & VPN services with various geo-IP locations across the United States. Prices range from $9 for a one-hour proxy license up to $225 for a one-month proxy license. Users can connect to one dedicated proxy modem at a time and with the click of a button they can connect to various other available 4G / 5G proxy modems to change their mobile IP or geo-IP location.

But how do they obtain the IP from Verizon, AT&T & T-Mobile? Are they operating ethically and legally with permission from the mobile carriers? Will they still be in business a year from now?

First, let’s take a look at their data center which is hosted at CoreSite in Los Angeles (900 N Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012). Here are some pictures of Vivid-Hosting setting up their new colocation cage area for the proxy servers…

Here are some CAD drawings we were able to find…

Let’s look at some of their 4G / 5G proxy modems…

Finally, let’s take a look at the finished product with active “cell sites”. Each Cabinet is a “Faraday Cage” which means that no outside signals (Cellular, Wifi, GPS…etc) can penetrate. They do this so that they can feed in their own spoofed GPS signal into the Faraday cage and use VPN tunnels along with custom firmware on each modem to “trick” the modem into thinking it’s in a totally different location than where it actually is. For example, while the modems are all in Los Angeles, CA one of the cabinets maybe for a “Miami, Florida” locate and inside it broadcasts a GPS location within Miami, Florida and it tunnels the IP through a VPN to spoof Verizon, AT&T & T-Mobile into thinking the modem is actually connecting from Miami Florida instead of Los Angeles, CA.

Using software from Anritsu they can operate a “Mini Cell Site” for each location and can control various aspects to specific requirements.

Okay, but is it legal? Are they using the IPs & Bandwidth with permission from AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile?

Short Answer / TLDR: Absolutely NOT!

Kiet Chau & Marcus Mamolen register multiple shell corporations and sign up for business-class cellular service from the major carriers to purchase bulk cell service contracts at a discounted price. All they need from the cell carrier is an authorized sim card to insert into their modems but they surely don’t tell them that when signing up for service. In addition to post-paid contracts setup under various companies and individual names (Kiet has some contracts under his wife name Helen Chau and each co-owner has several business accounts setup under their names) Kiet & Marcus utilize different prepaid sim cards to keep their mobile proxy network operating. Prepaid cards might cost a little extra but can be purchased in bulk for as low as $20 per month per sim card and they have thousands of them active at any given time.

How do they offer “unlimited bandwidth” when the mobile carriers will throttle most accounts when they pass ___GB of data each month?

Well this is a pretty easy explanation but rather complex to manage & implement. They offer unlimited bandwidth because most users do not use more than 5-10GB of data each month and they have soo many active modems that they can track, monitor and rotate sim cards in and out of the proxy pool to ensure that each proxy modem does not become “throttled” by the mobile networks. If a particular user is using soo much data then its usually just more cost-effective to boot them off the network than to worry about them chewing through modems available bandwidth causing other customers to complain about slow proxy speeds.

We reached out to a representative of AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile and showed them the MobileHop site and asked if they were authorized to provide mobile proxy services from their carrier and they all virtually immediately said absolutely not and that this is a clear violation of their Terms of Service and is considered to be fraud & theft of service. They all took down some basic notes and said they would forward it to their internal legal teams for review. We have no further information on the status of their investigation but imagine it will be hard to find them since Kiet uses multiple prepaid & postpaid accounts to hide his identity and online activity.

MobileHop attempts to hide its identity by registering its company in Sheridan, WY which is known for strong privacy laws but we know that Kiet Chau, Marcus Mamolen, Gary Chaboya, Phong (Bee) Nguyen all live and reside in San Diego, California and is simply a spin-off from Vivid-Hosting, LLC. Their website is disguised as providing enterprise-class mobile proxy services but we know their main source of clients is from BlackHatWorld forum where the average user is an affiliate marketer who needs to hide behind a proxy server to register and run multiple Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Adwords, Google Adsense, TikTok accounts. Most modern affiliate software allows the user to insert a proxy server and even poll the “IP Reset URL/API” as needed to automate their spam operations which often involve the use of stolen credit cards. Do you see true enterprise-grade software advertising on a spam forum such as BlackHatWorld? Notice how MobileHop does not accept credit cards

What’s our crystal ball prediction for MobileHop?

Well since we verified with Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility & T-Mobile that MobileHop is NOT authorized to use their cellular network to provide mobile proxies and the fact that they are using GPS spoofing (A crime in the USA) in addition to custom firmware (Kiet Chau learns this from working at Qualcomm as a senior engineer), spoofing, faraday cages, and VPN tunneling its obvious that MobileHop is profiting from fraudulent activities and it looks like the carriers are area and will take steps to shut them down sooner than later. I wouldn’t want to be caught with my pants down when the ship starts to sink or the FBI gets involved. While it appears that Kiet Chau is already working with the authorities to illegally log and hand over proxy data, it appears that the authorities are not fully aware of how Kiet is even obtaining his proxy IPs and bandwidth from. We predict that this service will be shut down within the year, maybe sooner or later we honestly don’t know.

IP Ranges Owned By Vivid-Hosting – Kiet Chau – MobileHop – IPv4Depot

The following is a list of IP ranges assigned to Kiet Chau from MobileHop & Vivid-Hosting. Click on any IP range to view all the individual IPs. As you can see these are all flagged as VPN & Proxy IPs which is what the customers use to connect to the 4G/5G Proxy Modem hosted within a Faraday cage in the Vivid-Hosting colocated datacenter at CoreSite LA2 DC.