Just like scrapers (and a lot of VPNs are quietly using their custom VPN clients to sell your own IP [and data] to scrapers) it's mostly a "don't ask don't tell" situation for IP sourcing. You use a multitude of IP providers and if a scandal happens you just say "We didn't know!" and move on to the next. Almost always grey-market, very rarely through legitimate providers.
Does anyone know if this is any issue for non-vpn users of datapacket.com?
Probably not that much worse than other VPS providers with trashed IP reputations, eg. digital ocean, vultr, ovh. If you're blocking bots, the first thing to block is any datacenter ip ranges, not just known VPN servers.
This isn't a practice all VPN providers partake in. And from my own anecdotal experiences, Mullvad seem to be using services that are geo-located (I say this because I've tested latency between different endpoints in Mullvad). But it is something to be wary of with some of the less reputable providers.
> Will other users of tuxlerVPN be able to connect using my IP address?
"When you use our free residential VPN, you automatically agree to add your IP address into the community pool. This means that you are trading your own IP address in return for the ability to connect via the IP addresses of other users. You can opt out of this by purchasing our premium subscription; once you upgrade to the premium version, your IP address will be removed from our community pool."
https://medium.com/@xianghangmi/resident-evil-understanding-...
Technical paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8835239
