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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

I guess It's only a matter of time and resources to develop new code that would pass the VM detection, perhaps not for the majority of phone farmers but should not be a problem for those readers who has a relevant background on HN.

1. Patch VM.

2. Launch 1,000 instances.

3. ???

4. Profit?

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

Given they had 350,000 SIM cards, it seems like you at least need a real cellular modem. It's probably cheaper and easier to just buy cheap Android phones.

Probably also less technically challenging / frustrating to set up in the first place, if they're getting used prepaid phones at $10 a piece.

You don't need SIM cards to do this.

I used to be a phone farmer back when I was school a few years ago (didn't know it was called that or that there was even a community around it). Any device with a WiFi connection worked at that point. Not sure if that's changed but I doubt it.

Also in the article they mentioned people virtualizing the process. It apparently is possible, but the farmers don't think it's worth it.

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