Snapchat Device Attestation v4: a complete teardown
Snap shipped attestation v4 on 12 July with no announcement. We had a patch out in 19 hours. Here is what changed and why it kills container-based cloud phones outright.
Field notes on cloud phones and bans
What we learn taking apart attestation SDKs and running 6.1M+ accounts, written down before we forget it.
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Phone farm vs cloud phone: the real 5-year TCO
Everyone compares handset price to monthly rental and stops there. That comparison is wrong by a factor of three. Here is the full model, including the line item nobody counts.
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Everything we have written
The Snapchat warm-up playbook that survives ban waves
We rebuilt this curve from 40,000 accounts that survived three ban waves. It is slower than you want it to be, and that is the point.
The 14 signals that get cloud phones banned
Every cloud phone ban traces back to one of fourteen signals. Nine of them are patchable. Five are not, and those five are why architecture beats spoofing.
Post-mortem: 61 hours, 1,847 accounts lost
This is the worst thing that has happened to us since 2023. We are publishing it in full because we said we would.
Passing TikTok Shop seller verification at scale
Seller verification fails for three reasons and only one of them is your paperwork. Here is the device side.
How Meta links your accounts — and how to break it
Losing one account is annoying. Losing twenty because they shared a device signature is a business problem. Here is the mechanism.
Mobile, residential or datacentre: choosing IPs
Most operators overpay for the wrong IP type. Here is the decision tree.
The 14-day Instagram warm-up that avoids shadow-bans
Instagram rarely bans. It throttles, silently, and you find out three weeks later from your reach graph.
Client isolation for agencies: stopping ban contagion
The agency nightmare is contagion. Here is the workspace structure that makes it impossible rather than unlikely.
What is a cloud phone, and who actually needs one?
Our oldest article, kept updated since 2022. If you are new to this, start here.
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Teardowns
Snapchat Device Attestation v4: a complete teardown
Snap shipped attestation v4 on 12 July with no announcement. We had a patch out in 19 hours. Here is what changed and why it kills container-based cloud phones outright.
The 14 signals that get cloud phones banned
Every cloud phone ban traces back to one of fourteen signals. Nine of them are patchable. Five are not, and those five are why architecture beats spoofing.
How Meta links your accounts — and how to break it
Losing one account is annoying. Losing twenty because they shared a device signature is a business problem. Here is the mechanism.
Topics
Playbooks
The Snapchat warm-up playbook that survives ban waves
We rebuilt this curve from 40,000 accounts that survived three ban waves. It is slower than you want it to be, and that is the point.
Passing TikTok Shop seller verification at scale
Seller verification fails for three reasons and only one of them is your paperwork. Here is the device side.
Mobile, residential or datacentre: choosing IPs
Most operators overpay for the wrong IP type. Here is the decision tree.
The 14-day Instagram warm-up that avoids shadow-bans
Instagram rarely bans. It throttles, silently, and you find out three weeks later from your reach graph.
Client isolation for agencies: stopping ban contagion
The agency nightmare is contagion. Here is the workspace structure that makes it impossible rather than unlikely.
What is a cloud phone, and who actually needs one?
Our oldest article, kept updated since 2022. If you are new to this, start here.
Topics
Economics
Phone farm vs cloud phone: the real 5-year TCO
Everyone compares handset price to monthly rental and stops there. That comparison is wrong by a factor of three. Here is the full model, including the line item nobody counts.
Topics
Post-mortems
Post-mortem: 61 hours, 1,847 accounts lost
This is the worst thing that has happened to us since 2023. We are publishing it in full because we said we would.
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