6 ms·

Chinese media exposes criminal smartphone farms

26 points by beardyw 3y ago

tivert 3y ago
> The report shows what appear to be chassis filled with 20 smartphone motherboards each, wired to a monitor that displays the screens of all 20 units. Also shown is a datacenter of sorts full of racks, each populated with several of the chassis and as many as 1,000 smartphones all hard at work. Why does the article not have pictures of this? If they're re-reporting CCTV coverage, I'm sure they could have included a screenshot of the video under fair use or something.
- Glant 3y ago
  The article links to this page which has some images https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aAEss31XCNAuDi517cUgnw https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aAEss31XCNAuDi517cUgnw
  - instagib 3y ago
    This looks like the Warcraft gold seller farm setup I saw on YouTube recently but for mobile. They all appear to show an mmorpg type of game macroing.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
theamk 3y ago
Interesting! This seems pretty country-specific. In the US, "fake comments or likes – some with SEO-boosting links – or placing fake orders on e-commerce sites." would normally be done using botnet'ed desktop PCs, no need for cell phones. But Chinese criminals need all the cellphones, so I wonder why? Is this because mobile bot detection is easier to bypass than desktop bot detection? Or maybe desktop bots are so common that cellphone is required for lots of actions?
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > I wonder why So much traffic has shifted to mobile that desktop traffic is inherently seen as more suspicious, so the spammers just adapted.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > But Chinese criminals need all the cellphones, so I wonder why Chinese platforms within China require authentication and ID verification. In addition, all phones need to be linked with a user's ID. Furthermore, a number of platforms in China are locked behind apps and don't offer a PWA. This is a side effect of mobile phones being the primary computing device in China. That said, this level of KYC is fairly normal outside of North America and Western Europe.
  - derelicta 3y ago
    It's also fairly normal in many western countries. At least in Switzerland you can't officially register a new SIM without showing your ID first or calling a specific ID validation service.

26 points by beardyw 3y ago

> The report shows what appear to be chassis filled with 20 smartphone motherboards each, wired to a monitor that displays the screens of all 20 units. Also shown is a datacenter of sorts full of racks, each populated with several of the chassis and as many as 1,000 smartphones all hard at work. Why does the article not have pictures of this? If they're re-reporting CCTV coverage, I'm sure they could have included a screenshot of the video under fair use or something.

Glant 3y ago
The article links to this page which has some images https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aAEss31XCNAuDi517cUgnw https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aAEss31XCNAuDi517cUgnw
- instagib 3y ago
  This looks like the Warcraft gold seller farm setup I saw on YouTube recently but for mobile. They all appear to show an mmorpg type of game macroing.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

theamk 3y ago

Interesting! This seems pretty country-specific. In the US, "fake comments or likes – some with SEO-boosting links – or placing fake orders on e-commerce sites." would normally be done using botnet'ed desktop PCs, no need for cell phones. But Chinese criminals need all the cellphones, so I wonder why? Is this because mobile bot detection is easier to bypass than desktop bot detection? Or maybe desktop bots are so common that cellphone is required for lots of actions?

Nextgrid 3y ago
> I wonder why So much traffic has shifted to mobile that desktop traffic is inherently seen as more suspicious, so the spammers just adapted.
alephnerd 3y ago
> But Chinese criminals need all the cellphones, so I wonder why Chinese platforms within China require authentication and ID verification. In addition, all phones need to be linked with a user's ID. Furthermore, a number of platforms in China are locked behind apps and don't offer a PWA. This is a side effect of mobile phones being the primary computing device in China. That said, this level of KYC is fairly normal outside of North America and Western Europe.
- derelicta 3y ago
  It's also fairly normal in many western countries. At least in Switzerland you can't officially register a new SIM without showing your ID first or calling a specific ID validation service.