The infrastructureSIM box · SIM bank

SIM farm

Racks of SIM cards driven by software, so that one operator controls hundreds or thousands of real mobile numbers. Used to receive verification codes, register accounts in bulk and originate messages that arrive as ordinary person to person traffic.

Why it matters to you

Every control that treats a phone number as proof of a person is defeated by hardware. If your onboarding trusts SMS verification as identity, it is trusting that numbers are scarce, and a farm is the argument that they are not. Rate limit on the behaviour, not on the number.

Where we meet it

Numbers are rented by the minute or by the code rather than sold outright, which is why a number that verified an account last week can verify a different one this week for somebody else entirely.

Where this term stops being vocabulary

Malveine is where you watch it happen to you

Knowing the word is the cheap half. The platform is the half where the term arrives attached to your domain, with a timestamp and the source it came from.