Hi! I am completely new here and want to start off my saying that I'm not really into black hatting, nor do I have any interest in getting into it, but I am interested in exploiting Temu as a one off thing. I want to start a discussion with those who might also be interested as that may help me reach my end goal that I will get into later.
For those who aren't aware: Temu is another one of those sketchy online shopping sites like Wish. I found out about Temu when I heard people were getting Nintendo Switches from there for free. It would have been easy for me to immediately dismiss this as a scam, but curiosity got the best of me and I looked into it a little bit, leading me to the Temu referral system rabbit hole. After seeing threads upon threads of people sharing their referral codes, I eventually concluded that...
TEMU IS A PYRAMID SCHEME!
I don't hear many people describing Temu this way so let me explain: people refer their friends to get free gifts, and then those people refer more people, creating a large chain of new users. At the end of the day, Temu is the one winning, getting a large user base despite their sketchy and poorly designed site.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm not into black hatting, so why am I interested in cheating this system? I'm not going to deny that there is certainly some financial incentive for me. I would love to get a free Switch OLED for myself and a few more to resell online. I do hope to make a couple thousand bucks off of this as that'll likely satisfy me for my last year of high school until I go out into the real world and get a job. I have my own morals, I would never do something sketchy for money that is negatively affecting people, but I feel no sympathy for taking advantage of this cancerous referral system setup by Temu. I want to make some money, but my end goal is to hopefully put an end to this referral system after enough people take advantage of it to the point where Temu has no option but to end it.
Progress so far:
After much investigation of how Temu's security works in terms of stopping self referrals, I found out that it's on a device basis. This was a very easy solution, as I was simply able to open Android studio and make a bunch of virtual machines. Instead of downloading Temu from the Play Store, I instead installed it manually using an APK in order to avoid having to make new Google accounts. Everything was going great as I was simply able to use Yahoo emails to sign up for Temu, but then I realized that Temu will ask for phone number verification. Phone numbers aren't easy to obtain and Temu will notice the usage of a repeat phone number. I feel like there has to be some way to exploit this system, I just don't know how yet.
What I need help with:
Plan A: avoiding the phone number verification pop-up
When Temu asks for a phone number, it says it's due to "unusual activity." I am unaware if they're just saying that but always ask for a phone number regardless, or if there's something triggering it, If we can find out what it is triggering the phone number verification message, then we could try to avoid it.
Plan B: exploiting the phone number verification system
This one may be far fetched and is out of my expertise, so I don't have much to say on the matter, but if anyone knows if it may be possible to exploit the system in some way to make it so you don't need to add a phone number or so you can use the same phone number, I am open to hearing ideas.
Plan C: Obtaining phone numbers for each individual account
This is the unfortunately likely last resort. Unfortunately, phone numbers are not easy to obtain and trying to find one that hasn't already been used with Temu could be a struggle. There are services to buy phone numbers which may be worth it, but if this whole idea in general fails, such will be a loss. If anyone has any knowledge of obtaining a lot of unused phone numbers, that would help a lot.
For those who aren't aware: Temu is another one of those sketchy online shopping sites like Wish. I found out about Temu when I heard people were getting Nintendo Switches from there for free. It would have been easy for me to immediately dismiss this as a scam, but curiosity got the best of me and I looked into it a little bit, leading me to the Temu referral system rabbit hole. After seeing threads upon threads of people sharing their referral codes, I eventually concluded that...
TEMU IS A PYRAMID SCHEME!
I don't hear many people describing Temu this way so let me explain: people refer their friends to get free gifts, and then those people refer more people, creating a large chain of new users. At the end of the day, Temu is the one winning, getting a large user base despite their sketchy and poorly designed site.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm not into black hatting, so why am I interested in cheating this system? I'm not going to deny that there is certainly some financial incentive for me. I would love to get a free Switch OLED for myself and a few more to resell online. I do hope to make a couple thousand bucks off of this as that'll likely satisfy me for my last year of high school until I go out into the real world and get a job. I have my own morals, I would never do something sketchy for money that is negatively affecting people, but I feel no sympathy for taking advantage of this cancerous referral system setup by Temu. I want to make some money, but my end goal is to hopefully put an end to this referral system after enough people take advantage of it to the point where Temu has no option but to end it.
Progress so far:
After much investigation of how Temu's security works in terms of stopping self referrals, I found out that it's on a device basis. This was a very easy solution, as I was simply able to open Android studio and make a bunch of virtual machines. Instead of downloading Temu from the Play Store, I instead installed it manually using an APK in order to avoid having to make new Google accounts. Everything was going great as I was simply able to use Yahoo emails to sign up for Temu, but then I realized that Temu will ask for phone number verification. Phone numbers aren't easy to obtain and Temu will notice the usage of a repeat phone number. I feel like there has to be some way to exploit this system, I just don't know how yet.
What I need help with:
Plan A: avoiding the phone number verification pop-up
When Temu asks for a phone number, it says it's due to "unusual activity." I am unaware if they're just saying that but always ask for a phone number regardless, or if there's something triggering it, If we can find out what it is triggering the phone number verification message, then we could try to avoid it.
Plan B: exploiting the phone number verification system
This one may be far fetched and is out of my expertise, so I don't have much to say on the matter, but if anyone knows if it may be possible to exploit the system in some way to make it so you don't need to add a phone number or so you can use the same phone number, I am open to hearing ideas.
Plan C: Obtaining phone numbers for each individual account
This is the unfortunately likely last resort. Unfortunately, phone numbers are not easy to obtain and trying to find one that hasn't already been used with Temu could be a struggle. There are services to buy phone numbers which may be worth it, but if this whole idea in general fails, such will be a loss. If anyone has any knowledge of obtaining a lot of unused phone numbers, that would help a lot.
