What does a bot army cost? This nasty SIM card scam is used for targeted manipulation on the internet
Virtual bot armies, purchased likes and political influence: how SIM cards from the gray market manipulate the internet and control trends.
12.12.2025, 00:01
13.12.2025, 07:06
dpa
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- According to a recent Cambridge study, SIM cards from the gray market are used to manipulate the internet in a targeted manner.
- Virtual bot armies can be verified online - and thus bought cheaply, just like fake likes.
- The researchers are encouraging a debate on whether the mass procurement of SIM cards should be made more difficult.
An extensive international gray market with SIM mobile phone cards promotes large-scale manipulation and fraud on the Internet. According to a study by the University of Cambridge, physical and virtual SIM cards from providers such as SMSActivate and 5Sim are used to verify fake online accounts on social media platforms or e-commerce providers.
"We are dealing with a thriving underground market where inauthentic content, fake popularity and political influence campaigns are easily and openly for sale," said Jon Roozenbeek, co-leader of the study.
Questionable or criminal bots confirmed via SMS
Many online platforms require verification via SMS when setting up a new account. This security measure is intended to confirm the authenticity of accounts and curb the mass creation of fake profiles.
Verification is actually intended to confirm that a person has set up an account with services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, X, Shopify and Amazon. In this case, however, SIM cards from the gray market are used to verify virtual bot armies.
Criminals, but also non-transparent political actors, use the fake accounts to make their own online presence appear larger than it actually is. The numbers are artificially inflated so that they look good but mean little - such as likes, followers or shares that have been bought or manipulated to make an account appear more popular.
However, SIM cards from the gray market are also used to create social media accounts that deliberately post very angry or provocative content so that many people react violently and comment. These actions are often planned and orchestrated to create a trend that is also intended to influence unsuspecting users.
Confirmation for WhatsApp and Telegram particularly expensive
The researchers from Cambridge discovered that the prices for fake SIM verification vary considerably depending on the application and the supposed country of origin of the SIM card. WhatsApp is the most expensive with an average price of 1.02 US dollars per verification, followed by Telegram with 0.89 dollars per account confirmation.
Confirmations for online platforms where, unlike WhatsApp and Telegram, the user's mobile phone number cannot be viewed openly, are available for less money. Facebook, Grindr and Shopify cost an average of eight US cents per verification, for X and Instagram accounts it is ten cents, for TikTok and LinkedIn it is eleven cents and for Amazon an average of twelve cents.
In order to make the SIM card verification trade transparent, the researchers developed the "Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index" (COTSI), which records the daily prices for SMS verifications for 197 countries and more than 500 platforms.
Bot prices rise ahead of national elections
Using the COTSI data, which is available free of charge on the web at cotsi.org, the researchers were also able to find out whether and how the market reacts to political events. To this end, the price data for eight social media platforms (Google/YouTube/Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, WhatsApp, TikTok, LinkedIn and Telegram) were analyzed in the run-up to 61 national elections.
It turned out that the prices for SMS verification for Telegram and WhatsApp App increase noticeably in the 30 days before a national election. The prices for Telegram verifications rose by an average of 12 percent, while WhatsApp saw an increase of 15 percent. By contrast, prices remained stable for the other six platforms.
The cost of SMS verification also depends on the country of origin of the SIM cards used. Verifications with SIM cards from Japan were particularly expensive with an average price of 4.93 dollars, followed by Australia (3.24 dollars), Turkey (2.54 dollars) and Malta (2.18 dollars). The cheapest SIM card countries of origin include the United States at 26 US cents, the United Kingdom at 10 cents and Russia at 8 cents per verification.
"Making mass SIM card procurement more difficult?"
In the study, the researchers encourage a debate on whether the mass procurement and use of SIM cards should be made more difficult. They pointed out that the operation of so-called SIM farms has no longer been permitted in the UK since April without a legitimate reason. These are technical devices that can contain many SIM cards at the same time - often several dozen to hundreds of SIM cards.
They can be used to send mass text messages, quickly change telephone numbers and carry out numerous verifications in order to create many online accounts at the same time or send masses of fraudulent phishing messages.
At the same time, the Cambridge researchers are calling on platform operators to make the country of origin of the SIM card used for verification more transparent. With services such as Google/YouTube/Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok and LinkedIn, the country in which the account is registered is generally not visible to other users. With messaging apps, on the other hand, it is easy to see where an account originates from.
