What is phone farm, how it works and who uses it?
Phone farm is to have a lot of phones that can control all at once in one computer.
There are three definitions that can explain what is a phone farm and how it works to pass ad views, clicks, registrations, installs, and in-app engagement.
1. A phone farm is a physical location where criminals force repeat actions such as ad views, clicks, registrations, installs, and in-app engagement to create the illusion of legitimate activity, draining advertising budgets.
2. Phone farms (also called device farms and click farms) are maintained for the purposes of mobile ad fraud and are illegal in much of the world.
3. Phone farm is to have a lot of phones that can control all at once in one computer.
As mobile advertising budgets have grown, phone farms dedicated to mobile fraud have become increasingly common.
Though phone farmers taking advantage of incentivized advertising have grown increasingly bold, often sharing their activity in public, more advanced phone farmers have found lucrative opportunities in the mobile app install market.
How phone farms work?
Advanced phone farmers use a variety of tactics to hide their activity, including hiding behind fresh IP addresses, using a broad variety of devices, while either enabling Limit Ad Tracking or hiding behind DeviceID Reset Fraud (resetting their DeviceIDs with each install).
When perpetrated at scale, this type of fraud is also known as DeviceID Reset Marathons.
Though device farms are often portrayed as a fraud-type that is based in Asia, our research has found device farms operating across the world, and advertisers around the world are impacted by this fraud.
Who Uses Phone Farms methods?
In some Asian countries, people use phone farms methods to generate Adsense revenue and providing youtube subscribers and watchtime. This results in draining advertisers’ budget.