Cloud phone and antidetect glossary
Forty-eight terms, defined the way an operator would explain them.
- ADB
- Android Debug Bridge — the command-line tool for talking to an Android device. PhoneCloudify exposes an ADB tunnel per device so you can run shell commands, install APKs and script anything the UI does not cover.
- Advertising ID
- A resettable identifier Google provides for ad attribution. Platforms use it as one node in their device graph, so two accounts sharing one are trivially linked.
- Android ID
- A 64-bit value unique to the app-signing key and device. Survives app reinstalls, which is exactly why reusing it across identities is fatal.
- Antidetect browser
- A desktop browser that spoofs the fingerprint of each profile. Excellent for web work, useless for apps that only exist on mobile.
- ASN
- Autonomous System Number — identifies who owns a block of IPs. A mobile carrier ASN reads as a phone; an AWS ASN reads as a server.
- Attestation
- A cryptographic claim from the device that its boot chain and hardware are genuine. Play Integrity is the Android implementation; Snapchat, banks and payment SDKs all consume it.
- Ban wave
- Retroactive enforcement in which a platform removes many accounts at once, usually after quietly collecting evidence for days or weeks. Snapchat is the archetype.
- Bare metal
- Software running directly on physical hardware with no hypervisor or container. What makes an PhoneCloudify node undetectable as a cloud phone.
- Behavioural fingerprint
- The pattern of how you tap, swipe, scroll and type. Increasingly weighted by platforms because it is hard to fake convincingly.
- Build fingerprint
- The ro.build.fingerprint string identifying the exact ROM. Must match a build that genuinely shipped for that model in that market.
- Camera injection
- Feeding an image or video into the device as though its own camera captured it, with correct EXIF, lens distortion and sensor noise.
- Cloud phone
- A real Android device hosted in a datacentre and controlled remotely, running 24/7 whether or not you are watching.
- Cohort
- A group of accounts sharing a signal. When a platform bans a cohort, it removes everyone in it — which is why identity isolation matters.
- Device graph
- The internal map platforms build linking accounts to device signatures. Meta's is the most aggressive; enforcement propagates across it.
- Emulator artefact
- Any trace of virtualisation — x86 ABI, QEMU pipes, goldfish drivers, SwiftShader renderer strings, missing sensors.
- EXIF
- Metadata embedded in a photo: camera model, lens, exposure, GPS, timestamp. Wrong EXIF is why "original" content gets flagged as reposted.
- Farm
- A physical array of handsets operated together. Traditionally the only way to run mobile apps at scale, and still the honest benchmark.
- Fingerprint entropy
- How much information a set of signals carries. Low entropy means many devices look identical — which is itself a signal.
- GSF ID
- Google Services Framework ID, tied to the device's Google account provisioning. Another node in the device graph.
- IMEI
- The 15-digit serial identifying a mobile handset on a network. Reissuing one across tenants links their accounts permanently.
- IMSI
- The identifier stored on a SIM identifying the subscriber. Must be coherent with the IMEI, the carrier and the IP.
- Keymaster
- The Android hardware-backed keystore. Attestation checks read its certificate chain to prove the device is genuine.
- Multi-accounting
- Operating more than one account on a platform. Legitimate for agencies, sellers and creators; the reason this whole product category exists.
- OTP relay
- Forwarding one-time SMS codes from a SIM bank to whoever needs them, so registration can be automated.
- Play Integrity
- Google's attestation API. Returns BASIC, DEVICE or STRONG. Emulators fail all three; PhoneCloudify Growth and above return STRONG.
- Proxy
- An intermediary that changes your apparent IP. A datacentre proxy reads as a server; a mobile proxy reads as a phone.
- Residential IP
- An IP allocated to a home broadband subscriber. Better than datacentre, worse than mobile, for apps that expect phones.
- RPA
- Robotic process automation — scripted UI interaction. PhoneCloudify runs it through human input synthesis so it does not read as scripted.
- Sensor spoofing
- Reporting fake accelerometer and gyroscope values. Detectable through entropy analysis, which is why PhoneCloudify replays real traces instead.
- Session artefact
- A token, cookie or auth key left behind by a login. Reusing one across accounts is the fastest way to link them.
- Shadow-ban
- Reach throttling without notification. Usually the first symptom of a device the platform distrusts.
- SIM bank
- Hardware holding many SIMs and routing any of them to any device, with SMS relay for OTP.
- SoC
- System on a chip — the CPU, GPU, modem and DSP on one die. Snapdragon and Dimensity are the two families PhoneCloudify runs.
- StrongBox
- A dedicated secure element for key storage, stronger than a software TEE. Required for the highest attestation tier.
- TEE
- Trusted Execution Environment — an isolated processor region for sensitive operations. Emulators cannot produce a genuine one.
- TCP fingerprint
- The signature of a device's TCP stack — window size, options, TTL. Differs between Android, Linux servers and proxies.
- Trust score
- A platform's internal rating of an account or device. Inherited: a new account on a burned device starts negative.
- Velocity
- Rate of actions per unit time — follows, DMs, uploads. Scored against account age and cohort norms.
- Warm-up
- The period of natural behaviour before an account does anything monetised. The single highest-leverage thing most operators skip.
- Widevine
- Google's DRM. L1 requires hardware-backed decryption; L3 is software-only and signals an emulator or a rooted device.
- WebRTC leak
- A browser or app revealing your real IP despite a proxy. Blocked at the kernel on every PhoneCloudify device.
- Workspace
- A container for devices, identities and seats. Agencies typically create one per client for hard isolation.
- x86 ABI
- The instruction set a container-based cloud phone reports. Real phones are arm64-v8a. This one string ends most cloud phones.
- Zombie account
- An account that still logs in but has zero reach. The end state of a shadow-ban, and the reason reach metrics matter more than login status.
Now the terms mean something, try the product.
Sixty free minutes on a real node — check every one of these signals yourself.