Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime

BreakDecks , 2 months ago

https://xkcd.com/1988

Pantherina , 2 months ago

This was always my idea, abuse "free money" apps where you watch ads for money en masse with automated swipes using apps like Smart Autoclicker and tadaaa! Free money.

Would be worse for the environment than mining Bitcoin though.

isles , 2 months ago

This story won't make your life better: As a broke twenty something, there was an app called SwagBucks (I just looked, it still exists). And you'd get paid for leaving the app up displaying ads. I don't know the state of Android emulators back then, so I bought ~12 cheap phones and left them on 24/7. Eventually, SwagBucks added an inactivity timer, so every 2 hours, I'd walk by the board of phones and tap them to keep going.

This all sounds incredibly stupid, but it was enough to pay for a fun Christmas. I think it was ~$500 in profit, after the cost of phones and electricity were accounted for. Payouts were Amazon giftcards.

Pantherina , 2 months ago

I mean it is basically profit on the back of cheap smartphone labor and a lot of wasted electricity, but it works. The stupid amazon giftcards are a problem, you could sell them for anonymous paying though.

WhatAmLemmy , 2 months ago

Nonetheless, Jiemian News reported that among the businesses engaged in mobile phone motherboard-related business, over 23 percent have run into legal trouble – but fewer than three percent have faced administrative penalties.

Sounds like the CCP, or high ranking members, are owners or customers for these "startups".

umbrella , 2 months ago

i wonder how the kits work

thesmokingman , 2 months ago

This headline was incredibly confusing to me because, as an American, I’d never heard of “mobes” as slang for mobile phones. The article does open with “phone motherboards” so I thought it was either a typo’d “mobos” or someone had changed the slang for motherboard when I wasn’t looking.

rmuk , 2 months ago

These people's minds will be blown when they hear about virtual machines.

0x0 , 2 months ago

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.

I wonder what the nearest cell tower could handle...

Also... "China Central Television (CCTV)", irony at its best.

KairuByte , 2 months ago

It’s unlikely they are using cellular connections. It would be much cheaper to just use WiFi on a phone that doesn’t have cell network access. Or they may even hardwire Ethernet, depending on what the devices are capable of.

SendMePhotos , 2 months ago

How do you get one

sundray , 2 months ago

For real, I'd love to have a barebones phone.

SendMePhotos , 2 months ago

Crime is just a bonus, I just want a debloated phone.

PoliticallyIncorrect , 2 months ago

👍👍