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Paid to keep laptops running at home or install a bandwidth app? What's really going on

Published November 3, 2026 · Example ads and messages are made up.

No selling, no customers, no hours. All you have to do is keep a computer switched on at home, install an app that “shares your connection”, or receive a few laptops and leave them plugged in. In return, a steady payment. It sounds like the easiest remote job there is. This guide explains why, in these offers, what is really being bought is your internet address, your home and sometimes your identity, and what to do if you already said yes.

Why would anyone pay you to leave a computer on?

Every time you go online, websites see an IP address: the one your internet provider assigned to your home connection. To a bank, an online store or a company hiring remote staff, a residential address in the US or the UK looks normal. It looks like an ordinary person at home. That is exactly what makes it valuable to someone who wants to hide. If a fraudster's traffic runs through your laptop or phone, the other side sees you.

These offers come in two main flavors. The details vary, the logic doesn't: someone needs a clean local presence in your country, and they rent it from you.

1. “Host our developers' laptops”

Here is a made-up example of how it can look:

Freelance remote IT support, no experience needed! We'll ship you a few company laptops for our clients. Just power them on, connect them to your Wi-Fi, install the remote support tool we send you and keep them running. $300 a month per laptop, paid weekly.

The FBI has a name for this: a “laptop farm”. In public service announcement I-101326-PSA, dated October 13, 2026, the FBI warns that North Korean IT workers, who get hired remotely under false identities, post fake job openings on well-known job boards, often as freelance gigs. The requests are simple: interview on someone else's behalf, or receive and host laptops in your home. Other tasks on the list include appearing on camera, verifying identities, sharing social media or professional accounts and shipping packages. The FBI says recruiters target people under financial stress, that the people helping them include both witting and unwitting Americans, and that these actions are illegal and put participants at risk of law enforcement scrutiny.

This is not a hypothetical risk. On July 24, 2025, the Justice Department announced that an Arizona woman who ran one of these laptop farms had been sentenced to 102 months in prison. More than 90 laptops were seized from her home, and the scheme defrauded 309 US businesses.

The close variations are just as easy to describe: “do the interview for me”, “put your name on the contract”, “give me access to your LinkedIn”. If someone is paying you to be you on their behalf, you are lending them your identity.

2. “Earn passive income by sharing your internet”

The second flavor is subtler, because it often shows up as an app to download rather than a job. A made-up example:

Make money from home doing nothing! Install our app on your phone or PC, leave it running and get paid for every GB of bandwidth you share. The more devices you connect, the more you earn. Refer friends for a bonus.

These apps turn your device into an “exit node” in a residential proxy network: strangers browse the web through your IP address. In public service announcement I-031226-PSA, dated March 12, 2026, the FBI lists passive income apps that promise to pay for your bandwidth among the ways criminal traffic ends up on ordinary people's connections. The criminal uses it lists include phishing, creating fake accounts, password-guessing attacks, data theft and account takeovers that slip past bank fraud alerts. Because criminals are using your IP address, the FBI notes, that activity can look like it came from you.

Google, which in January 2026 disrupted one of the largest networks of this kind, put it even more bluntly: consumers should be extremely wary of apps that offer payment for “unused bandwidth” or “sharing your internet”, because they are a primary way illicit proxy networks grow and they can open security holes on your home network. The same report explains that people whose devices act as exit nodes can end up flagged as suspicious or blocked by online services, and that traffic passing through a device can expose other devices on the same network.

Not every bandwidth-sharing app is necessarily illegal, and some are open about how they work. But when it is pitched to you as a job, with a recruiter in a chat, referral bonuses and pay that grows with every device you connect, the bottom line is the same: you are handing strangers the use of your online identity, and the consequences stay with you.

How this differs from other job scams

• They don't ask you for money. In fact, they may really pay you. That is why the rule “a real job never asks you to pay” is not enough here. If they also want a deposit or a fee, read asked to pay before you start a job?.
• No money or parcels go through your account, as in the money mule scam. What goes through you is data, connections and access. It is a close cousin, though: someone uses you so they don't show up.
• The software isn't there to steal your account, as in the cases in our guide on recruiters who ask you to download files or apps. It is there to use your device as a bridge. For your security, the result can be much the same.

Red flags that should make you stop

• The job is “keep it switched on”. Leaving a device connected, receiving laptops, installing a tool and never touching it again is not work a real company needs to pay a stranger for.
• Company laptops shipped to your home for someone else. A real employer ships a work laptop to the person it hired, not to a middleman.
• Remote access software chosen by the recruiter, to be installed on devices someone else will use.
• Pay tied to how many devices or how much bandwidth you provide, not to anything you actually do.
• Requests to lend your name, face or accounts: interviewing for someone else, signing a contract, appearing on a video call, sharing your professional profile.
• An elaborate backstory to explain it all: “I'm a foreign developer who needs a temporary presence in your country”, “our clients need local IP addresses”.
• Pressure or threats when you want to stop. The FBI reports that intimidation and threats of violence have been used to keep people involved.

Before you say yes: three questions

1. Who will actually use the device or the connection? If the answer is vague, “our clients”, “our developers”, you have no way of knowing what will be done from your address.
2. Which company am I working for, exactly? Legal name, address, a written contract. Check them yourself using our guide on how to verify a company before a job interview.
3. Would I be comfortable explaining this to my bank, my internet provider or the police? If the thought makes you uneasy, that tells you something.

If the offer came from a job posting, you can also run it through the job scam checker: vague duties, out-of-scale pay and chat-only contact often show up in the text itself.

If you already agreed: what to do

1. Stop now. Power down and disconnect any laptops you received. Don't ship them on or hand them to anyone before talking to law enforcement: they may be evidence.
2. Uninstall the bandwidth-sharing or remote access app and review what is installed on your phone and computer. The FBI warns that malware can stay behind even after you remove the app that brought it in, so run an up-to-date antivirus scan and, if you can't clean the device, reinstall the operating system.
3. Change your passwords for accounts used on those devices or on the same network, turn on two-factor authentication, and change your Wi-Fi and router passwords.
4. If you shared ID documents or account logins, read our guide on employers asking for ID, SSN or verification codes for how to limit the damage.
5. Keep the evidence: the ad, chats, names, shipping addresses, tracking numbers, payments received, the names of the apps.
6. In the US, the FBI asks people to contact their local FBI field office or file a complaint at ic3.gov. Telling your side first is far better than explaining it later if your address or name turns up in an investigation.
7. Report it. In the US, file a report with the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov if the scam happened online or involved crypto. In the UK, report it to Report Fraud, the national service that replaced Action Fraud, at reportfraud.police.uk (England, Wales and Northern Ireland; in Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101).
8. If you are threatened or fear for your safety, call 911 in the US or 999 in the UK.
9. Report the ad or profile to the job board or platform where you found it.