
America’s DIY Phone Farmers - vit05
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm
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newguy1234
I used to do this awhile back and yes it is true. You could make around
$1,000-$2,000 per month in gift cards doing it with maybe 50-70 phones. Most
apps being used were 100% passive. The only thing you needed to do was restart
the phone every 24 hours. The apps would run and show ads to you and just loop
over and over. So what about electricity costs? for running 70 phones 24/7 in
a month, that was about $10 more in power. Each phone cost around $20 which I
bought off ebay. These were phones where the screen was cracked, the IMEID was
blacklisted and some I think were reported stolen as well. This was maybe 3-4
years back though. Over the years, the whole thing has come tumbling down. Now
you'll make maybe $100/month and it isn't passive anymore, so not worth doing
it but back in the day....we were banking it no doubt about it. Also, yes I
would pay tax on all of it. The companies would send a 1099.

This was the guy who showed me how to do it. I just basically copied his
routine exactly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLYNgUdZfmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLYNgUdZfmc)

~~~
nothrabannosir
You have my support for bleeding advertisers (and paying taxes ;) ) but I do
want to point out one thing which is sometimes overlooked:

 _> some I think were reported stolen as well_

If true, that incentivises phone theft. The only reason people steal phones is
because there's a market. Every purchase of a stolen good directly
incentivises that thief to steal once more. It's a very direct link. If you've
ever had anything stolen, please break the chain and consider verifying
somehow, some way, that your next purchase wasn't originally lifted off
someone else. It can suck, especially if you've been a victim yourself and
it's just unfair.

Other than that thanks for doing your part in poisoning the advertising well
:)

~~~
kennywinker
> The only reason people steal phones is because there's a market.

From what I can tell, the protections put on newer phones by the vendors has
massively crushed the stolen phone market. Modern phones are locked to a
google or apple account and basically only usable as a) parts for repair or b)
if you can phish the password from the original owner, you can unlock them.

Basically, discouraging people from buying used phones, lest they be stolen,
is a way less effective mechanism for reducing theft than this kind of
structural change.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
The person you are replying to wasn't discouraging people from buying used
phones generally, just ones that you have reason to believe are stolen.

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inflatableDodo
This is straight out of 'Armageddon: The Musical' by Robert Rankin.

 _" On this particular morning, Rex sat in his homemade armchair, facing the
flickering TV screen. His was the classic seated posture of the Active Viewer.
Relaxed yet attentive, right thumb and forefinger about the remote controller,
expression alert, eyes wide. But here all similarities ended. Rex Mundi was
fast asleep._

 _His old Uncle Tony had taught him the technique when he was but a leprous
lad, and there was no doubt that it did pay big dividends. It had already
earned Rex sufficient rehousing credits to get him overground and he actually
possessed a surplus of food and medico rations. His generosity with these made
him quite popular and respected locally. But the greatest benefit to Rex was
that it left him plenty of time to indulge in his own personal studies. These
centred upon a book his Uncle Tony had bequeathed to him, a curious volume
entitled The Suburban Book of the Dead. Uncle Tony had pressed-the crumbling
tome upon Rex with the simple statement, 'Knowledge is power'._

 _Shortly after this, he had spontaneously combusted while watching his
favourite game show. The way he would have wanted to go,’ Aunty Norma put it.
"_

~~~
teh_klev
Man I love Robert Rankin. I read the Brentford Triangle "trilogy" when I was
in college in the 80's. I used to laugh almost uncontrollably on the bus when
reading his books which prompted some funny looks from other passengers.

~~~
inflatableDodo
I think my favourite is still 'The Book Of Ultimate Truths'.

~~~
teh_klev
Cheers for the recommendation. Your previous comment has piqued my interest in
Rankin again so I think I'll backfill the ones I'm missing.

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moron4hire
I feel like the best strategy to combat this would be to create lightweight
virtualization and automation tools that could be easily deployed by anyone,
thereby destroying any company that comes up with these stupid strategies.
Just burn the whole system down to the ground, salt the earth, and leave it to
be a weird blip in internet history.

EDIT: I'm a guy who builds thing and occasionally takes a chance at trying to
promote those things. I've been on the receiving end of a fair amount of ad-
fraud. The tech press is full of stories of people who say they just "put a
few ads out" and then took off with their products. It's almost a meme. But
it's a filthy lie. It's a lie that you can navigate the ad-tech industry
without making it your full-time job. It's a lie that the ad-tech industry is
a good way to get attention for your projects. It's a lie that the ad-tech
industry is interested in doing anything about fraud. I've dealt with Google,
Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, and in each case _at least half_ of the money
I've spent has evaporated away to ad fraud. And then, when you bring it up on
HN, you get the replies, "lol, that's just the cost of doing business." No. No
no no no no.

The Amazon one was particularly bad, because it lead to me getting a ton of
fake followers on Twitter, killing my ranking in their timeline view,
requiring me to spend about as much as a total working week on
block/unblocking people to kick them out of my followers list, just to get
back to a good state. For $50 of advertising, I had to spend around $2000 of
my time to fix the issue and got nothing real out of it.

~~~
newguy1234
Trust me, people have been trying to cheat the system with stuff like what you
are saying. The advertising companies know how to detect that stuff quickly
and ban the abusers.

~~~
moron4hire
That's what I'm saying, the ad exchanges say they know how to detect the
cheats, but they don't actually do a good job of it. And it's not really in
their interest to do so. They get paid equally for ad-fraud as they do for
legitimate impressions. The person actually advertise the product or service
gets shafted. But as long as there is a long tail of people like me when I
first got started who don't understand the issue of ad fraud (and the
complicit people who sing the praises of advertising to boost the idea that
it's a good path), the ad exchange will keep raking in money, just like the
people committing the fraud.

It's easy to look at this as "Farmers vs. Google AdWords" or whatever other ad
exchange we might consider. But Google is just a middle-man. And as long as
the system works for some definition of "works", they can capitalize on
asymmetric information about the ad industry to bleed money out of small
actors.

With online advertising, it's exceptionally easy to end up in a situation
where everyone gets paid except you.

~~~
newguy1234
Oh yeah, I get you. Yeah, that is something the ad network has to deal with.
Really crazy to think how much online ad dollars are spent as well. I think
most of google's revenue is directly from advertising.

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nradov
Anyone who helps to wreck the advertising economy is doing a valuable public
service.

~~~
trhway
wreck? Such scams is effectively similar to shoplifting, CC fraud or just an
additional tax/tariff - i.e. it increases the friction and expenses in the
system and the most of the burden to cover it ultimately falls upon the
weakest participant in the system - usually the consumer.

~~~
newguy1234
The difference is that these apps were offered as stuff like "play games, earn
rewards." "watch videos, earn rewards" etc. so I don't know how it could even
be remotely related to shoplifting or cc fraud...where those are so obvious.

~~~
trhway
>"play games, earn rewards." "watch videos, earn rewards"

"pay money, take the bagel". Violating such a contract by intentionally and
knowingly skipping or falsifying the delivery of your part of the exchange
looks to me like a fraud [IANAL].

~~~
newguy1234
The games had "auto advance" modes built directly in to them.

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imgabe
Is there a way to do this without buying actual phones? If you could fool the
app into believing an Android VM is a phone you could really scale it up.

~~~
newguy1234
No. The reason is because it is easy for the app developers to detect when you
are using a VM. The ad networks also have a bunch of detection software
running to find it as well. Same goes for using proxy/vpn. You will be banned
very quickly for doing it. Do not even attempt it.

~~~
tazard
From the article: > One farmer said they do sometimes virtualize phones on
their PC, but due to how resource intensive that can be on the computer, it
works out as more cost effective to have a selection of cheap phones instead.

So I guess the answer would be yes, but it doesn't make a lot of sense/cents

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droithomme
If someone's life is so desperate that doing this is worth the time
investment, I can't begrudge them it. Likewise with those poor souls who
survive and are thankful to eat rotting refuse from dumpsters. Perhaps the
income will help them lift themselves up to the point they can pursue a more
satisfying life.

~~~
newguy1234
I used to do phone farming. You don't understand how it works. After you setup
your farming rig, all you had to do was put about 1 hour per day of
maintenance into it, often times even less than that...and you would earn
$1,000-$2,000 per month from it in gift cards.

All of the apps were passive, it just would loop over and over playing ads.

~~~
Scoundreller
Curious about what maintenance was required: looking for new programs?
Installing new programs? Actual interaction with phones? Culling broken
devices?

~~~
dylz
Restarting crashed apps (ads can load their own awful code), tapping periodic
"are you still watching", swapping between apps during certain hours for more
revenue

