It turns out that only the RETR , LIST and NLST methods are supported by System.Net.FtpWebRequest when the HTTP proxy is configured, and it does not matter that you do not set the proxy server in your code: if the proxy server is an HTTP proxy (not an FTP proxy ) is configured in the proxy settings of the system (for example: Internet Options \ Connections \ LAN Settings \ Proxy Server \ Use a proxy server for your local network), you will receive this error when trying to load the FTP server.
The workaround uses IE to change system settings to disable the use of an HTTP proxy. However, if you have access to the affected code, the solution should set the Proxy property of the request to null, for example:
request.Proxy = null;
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