My journey to greatness

I wish you good luck.

XcoBAR said:

Maybe you can help me with those tricks to switch the app data, we can negotiate that knowledge if you want to

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Usually I like to exchange knowledge so I learn something and you learn something.
If you talk about selling, I would charge around middle 4-figure just for this one thing and I am not sure this will be worth it for you.

caffelatte said:

that was a really nice post i did read everything and it was all interesting. i could suggest some things if you have time to talk someday

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Sure, you can DM me or we can talk on Telegram https://t.me/mattdeox

Hello! Great read and after lurking for a long while decided to say hi!

I am curious what mechanism you are using to present your 4G dongles to your networked phones? Some sort of computer with proxy software or something else?

that was an amazing read! I have a few questions about how you started using Quic/HTTP3. I would love to discuss this on telegram if it's okay with you

4G5GProxies said:

Hello! Great read and after lurking for a long while decided to say hi!

I am curious what mechanism you are using to present your 4G dongles to your networked phones? Some sort of computer with proxy software or something else?

Click to expand...

avinashsah said:

that was an amazing read! I have a few questions about how you started using Quic/HTTP3. I would love to discuss this on telegram if it's okay with you

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I just have a machine that all 4G dongles connect to.
Then I use iptables rules on the devices to route the connection through them.
How you could replicate this, depends entirely on how everything is set-up on your end.

avinashsah said:

that was an amazing read! I have a few questions about how you started using Quic/HTTP3. I would love to discuss this on telegram if it's okay with you

Click to expand...

4G5GProxies said:

Hello! Great read and after lurking for a long while decided to say hi!

I am curious what mechanism you are using to present your 4G dongles to your networked phones? Some sort of computer with proxy software or something else?

Click to expand...

I wanted to add to this, I am not an expert on this matter.
In fact I fiddled around for a couple of weeks until I got it somewhat working specifically for my set-up.

Today I wanted to write something about money and happiness.
I think it floats around somewhere that the amount of happiness you get from money decreases sharply after you get around $7500 per month.
But I think it could not be further from the truth. With $7500 you can do almost nothing.
You cannot live in a fancy building, eat the best food and enjoy life in any way you want.
I think the spending budget you need is closer to $100k per month.
Probably after this, more money does not make you more happy in its own.
For me this is the kind of lifestyle I need to keep pushing hard every day.

Small update to the journey, I started to create some accounts finally and the accounts I have are close to 3k right now.
I hope in the next month/s I can reach 10k+ accounts stable.

Another note on warming-up accounts. I said that I don't believe in it but I think I should clarify it more.
With this I meant warming-up existing accounts. For example you receive an account that was used somewhere else in the past.
This should not require a warm-up.

However, if you create a new account, certain "warming-up" is required, else your account could easily get flagged.
If you create an account and immediately like 100s of posts, it is not normal and you will get flagged.
If you are going to do anything out of the ordinary, I suggest to do some normal actions first.
Like browsing the feed, browsing the explore, uploading a profile picture, setting a bio, etc.
From what I know, IG is watching newly created profiles more closely than older profiles.

Great journey to follow. Really enjoy the writing style. Also going all out to get that automation on IG running is amazing.
I don't think I would be mentally able to order x phones, spend weeks figuring out the setup and everything to not be 100% sure that I can make money with this.
Different of experience I guess. Since I've never done money by marketing something via bots etc.

Hope to see you getting some huge returns soon

Inspiring, well done and wishing you more success!!!

Recently I throught again about time management. It seems like 24h you have every day is so little.
If you sleep properly, you have 16 hours every day where you can do something.
But actually 16 hours is much time if you use it properly.

Imagine you work extremely focused what you can get done in a short period of time.
Well can you do that for 16 hours? Probably not because it is extremely hard but I think this is some training and after some time you can get there.
I think the trick is to eliminate all unnecessary things and then you will spend more time on the things that matter.

For example when I had some blockage with work, I used to watch some youtube video or browse some website to relax a bit and to get a fresh mind.
But those occasions add up quicker than you think and in reality they are a waste of time.
So now I have a list of things I need to do and when I am stuck on one, I switch to another.

It feels quite hard to be productive all the time but I think in the end it is going to be worth it.

AllOutAnime said:

For example when I had some blockage with work, I used to watch some youtube video or browse some website to relax a bit and to get a fresh mind.
But those occasions add up quicker than you think and in reality they are a waste of time.
So now I have a list of things I need to do and when I am stuck on one, I switch to another.

It feels quite hard to be productive all the time but I think in the end it is going to be worth it.

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Humans were not created to sit in front of PC for 16 hours. And before someone says "But Kukiezi, I am sitting 16 hours all the time!"... okay, I've done that too, and the way you feel when you do it regularly is really, really shit (I think for some real depression creeps in)
So Im no where near perfect when it comes to productivity. But what I can recommend is, split the day into parts that will give you 100% productivity and let you recover and reset your mind.
1) Start working in the morning (full focus)
2) Getting tired, angry, stuck? Now its physical activity time. You remember how many times you found solutions in your head while doing something random? Yeah, thats how shit works. Go to the gym, go for a walk, run, maybe go play some kind of sport.
3) Now once you are done, you will be excited again to start working.

I think this way you can become much more productive in smaller window, while keeping your health and mental health up. Don't get burned out too fast.

There is no end to what can be done with a phone farm. It totally depends on one's imagination.

I read the article with pleasure. You have an entrepreneurial spirit. I hope you reach your dream figures.
Those who do not take risks in this life cannot drink whiskey : )

btw. Are you already monetising the bots? Sounds like you have 3k bots running at least now. Isn't that a good number to start generating some revenue?

Also, is there even a way to bot instagram without having mobile phone farm these days? In theory if you were to do automation via anti-browser, headful. Warm-up accounts and don't perform crazy amount of actions... it should become a trusted account? Or is the issue somewhere else? Trying to understand why the phones are becoming the only viable way these days for botting.

Kukiezi said:

Also, is there even a way to bot instagram without having mobile phone farm these days? In theory if you were to do automation via anti-browser, headful. Warm-up accounts and don't perform crazy amount of actions... it should become a trusted account? Or is the issue somewhere else? Trying to understand why the phones are becoming the only viable way these days for botting.

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I have tried 3 methods, and one of them worked but it's not very reliable as OP has mentioned in this thread.

1. Automation via anti-browsers
Works about 10% of the time.

2. Reverse-engineered Instagram's browser API
Similar results. With this, I concluded that maybe Instagram trusts browsers more.

3. Reverse-engineered Instagram's mobile API
Works like a charm, but only until Instagram implements something new. Very hard to reverse full client 1:1

I was trying this, now almost a year ago, and since then the client has again changed a lot.
So, I believe a mobile farm is the best bet.

avinashsah said:

I have tried 3 methods, and one of them worked but it's not very reliable as OP has mentioned in this thread.

1. Automation via anti-browsers
Works about 10% of the time.

2. Reverse-engineered Instagram's browser API
Similar results. With this, I concluded that maybe Instagram trusts browsers more.

3. Reverse-engineered Instagram's mobile API
Works like a charm, but only until Instagram implements something new. Very hard to reverse full client 1:1

I was trying this, now almost a year ago, and since then the client has again changed a lot.
So, I believe a mobile farm is the best bet.

Click to expand...

So basically either spend a lot of time updating your reversed engineer instagram mobile API. Lose bots every now and then, because of API updated.
or
Spend thousands on mobile farm. Probably don't lose bot accounts, unless spamming etc.

To scale either, you might need 4g proxies, cause apparently having sims in Phones can be limiting. More flexibility.
Well, for now Im busy with my other journey projects. But Im excited to follow this journey, and see what is possible these days with IG.

Kukiezi said:

btw. Are you already monetising the bots? Sounds like you have 3k bots running at least now. Isn't that a good number to start generating some revenue?

Also, is there even a way to bot instagram without having mobile phone farm these days? In theory if you were to do automation via anti-browser, headful. Warm-up accounts and don't perform crazy amount of actions... it should become a trusted account? Or is the issue somewhere else? Trying to understand why the phones are becoming the only viable way these days for botting.

Click to expand...

I am testing different things and I will share some results later on when they are more consistent.
I will reply on the botting below.

avinashsah said:

I have tried 3 methods, and one of them worked but it's not very reliable as OP has mentioned in this thread.

1. Automation via anti-browsers
Works about 10% of the time.

2. Reverse-engineered Instagram's browser API
Similar results. With this, I concluded that maybe Instagram trusts browsers more.

3. Reverse-engineered Instagram's mobile API
Works like a charm, but only until Instagram implements something new. Very hard to reverse full client 1:1

I was trying this, now almost a year ago, and since then the client has again changed a lot.
So, I believe a mobile farm is the best bet.

Click to expand...

Most automation is on browsers as far as I know so Instagram is the strictest here. There are many browser fingerprints nowadays that people never even heard of. Canvas, WebGL, etc. are popular but there are many more. When you install Windows, your fingerprint is already registered in a database and if your anti-detect does not have the correct one, it is a flag. I would say without using a VM with the correct parameters it is very difficult to emulate correct browser fingerprints nowadays.

Reversing the Instagram API works unless you go too hard but it bears a huge risk. One day there could be an IG update which wipes away everything you have and everything stops working (which happened to me).
With every update you need to completely reverse-engineer the whole App from scratch to see what changed. Even if things look the same, they are often not and by generating some values they reveal if a device is genuine or not. For example the old signing key that is not used anymore was swapped on altered devices and depending on which key was used, IG immediately knew if you had an altered device. And there were hundreds of those checks inside.

As I said, I had a full team of people work on this and it took them over a year to update the codebase to a newer version. By the time they finished, the version we were using was already outdated, it was an uphill battle.
The advantage is that if this works you can run as many accounts as you want on little hardware.
For browsers or phones you need to have actual hardware that supports your concurrency.

Kukiezi said:

So basically either spend a lot of time updating your reversed engineer instagram mobile API. Lose bots every now and then, because of API updated.
or
Spend thousands on mobile farm. Probably don't lose bot accounts, unless spamming etc.

To scale either, you might need 4g proxies, cause apparently having sims in Phones can be limiting. More flexibility.
Well, for now Im busy with my other journey projects. But Im excited to follow this journey, and see what is possible these days with IG.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say the phone farm is expensive if you buy older models that are broken to the point that nobody wants to use those phones anymore.
It is important to buy flagship versions of those phones because they are more durable even when something is broken.
In any case you need 4G proxies, if you use browser automation, API automation or real phones.

But don't think the real devices is some holy grail. It has issues as well.
If you don't root your devices, you are limited of what you can do. If you root your devices, then Instagram is on you again.
You need to spoof device data, hide your root and hide your automation and some other things.

From what I can see more and more people are getting into mobile automation, more and more effort will be put to prevent such things.
I am working on this since beginning of the year and I have only scratched the tip of the iceberg, this rabbit hole goes so deep it is unbelievable.

This is much stuff for a person to do alone, I would love to collaborate with some skilled people on the mobile automation.

Nice time reading your story

AllOutAnime said:

But don't think the real devices is some holy grail. It has issues as well.
If you don't root your devices, you are limited of what you can do. If you root your devices, then Instagram is on you again.
You need to spoof device data, hide your root and hide your automation and some other things.

Click to expand...

Sounds like some folks on the forum are selling the idea of using mobile devices for "automation" without actually knowing it's not straight forward as well. And probably can also be detected as you mentioned... unless you don't root ye. But that is apparently limiting in some ways. Very interesting, thank you for so much useful info in this thread.

One question about your setup. If you forward your phone through 4g proxy, in the end doesn't it show that the operating system that is talking to instagram is "linux"? Since well, 4g proxies are connected to something, that is usually a linux machine? And I don't think there is a way around it? Maybe my understanding is wrong tho.

Kukiezi said:

Sounds like some folks on the forum are selling the idea of using mobile devices for "automation" without actually knowing it's not straight forward as well. And probably can also be detected as you mentioned... unless you don't root ye. But that is apparently limiting in some ways. Very interesting, thank you for so much useful info in this thread.

One question about your setup. If you forward your phone through 4g proxy, in the end doesn't it show that the operating system that is talking to instagram is "linux"? Since well, 4g proxies are connected to something, that is usually a linux machine? And I don't think there is a way around it? Maybe my understanding is wrong tho.

Click to expand...

I think most bots here use the easiest solution which is using cloner apps but as far as I know IG detects this as well.
Probably it will be fine for people that run a few accounts but nothing sophisticated.

I met many people that will tell you it is impossible to run Android automation on Instagram and that you should use iOS instead.

The answer to your question depends on many factors.
Instagram uses HTTP/3 most of the time which uses UDP.
When I checked official sources, I didn't find official fingerprints like it exists with TCP but I am not sure that Instagram does not have its own way of finding this out.
For TCP, there are tools to spoof it like https://github.com/segofensiva/OSfooler-ng
From what I know, the software dictates the request and not the hardware.

Lastly, I am not sure yet and I did not test if this is correct or if the end device that sends the requests modifies the connections in any way as well.
So let's say you use proxy A. I don't know if the connection will be different if proxy A runs through a dongle or through a smartphone to make the connection.