What is a click farm?
A click farm is an operation where low-paid workers, or racks of phones controlled by software, click ads, install apps, like posts or fill in forms in bulk to fake engagement. Because real people and real devices are involved, click-farm traffic can pass simple bot filters, which makes it harder to detect than purely automated fraud.
A click farm (also called a human fraud farms farm) might be a room of workers each handling dozens of phones, or a device farm where hundreds of handsets are wired to a controller. They are used for click fraud, install fraud, fake social followers and review manipulation. Some use emulator farms instead of physical devices to cut costs.
Tell-tale signs include many devices sharing a handful of IP addresses or Wi-Fi networks, identical device models and OS versions, installs followed by no in-app activity, and engagement clustered in the working hours of a single time zone regardless of the campaign's target market.