Lately, there has been much fuss about the invite system and how to exploit it with scripting — as of now, there are two methods, both published by Jake Cooper, and there’s a response from Oneplus in which they state they’ll exclude everyone using such methods: https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/a-note-on-mischief.333441/

Now, let’s analyze that a bit. How can they know someone used “fake” subscriptions to bump himself up?

for the first method, it’s really easy. 32 random characters are that easy to distinguish from real names, it’s absolutely trivial to exclude those people from the list later on when invites are given out.

method two: here’s it’s even easier, since every mail is the exact same just with a few dots added. All they have to do is run a script removing the dots and every mail is the same.

So, what can a cheater do and why am I writing this?

As you can easily try (with Jake Coopers methods), it only needs about a hundred votes to ush yourself up to the thousand region. However, you#re most likely banned with this. Therefor, I’ll explain another method that most likely is completely safe. And why am I doing this? One of my legittimate entries is now at 400000, and there’s no real hope for me to get the phone at launch. Also, they still haven’t implemented a simple captcha that renders msot cheating techniques useless. So, here we go.

What you’ll need:

TinyTask or a similar tool

a bit of time

some pc skills, I won’t elaborate on every single step

for Gmail, an IP reset tool

Now, it’s really easy to get a few hundred entries. To do so, you just need to record the steps to get a legitimate entry. What’s a legitimate entry?

a good mail provider — nothing trashy, I’ll go with google mail

no cryptic addresses — a random name generator will serve you well

Gmail captchas — either find a different mail provider, or earn yourself some entries in a few minutes with captcha brotherhood or a similar service, OCR works with Google’s captchas as well

add a random delay at every end of the run, maybe they’ll filter out entries with a clear pattern

If you’re still following, this is what you’ll need to do:

record with Tinytask

gamil only: reset your IP, otherwise you’ll be asked for SMS verification

create a new mail account, with a random name generator

click through all the welcome messages in your inbox

copy the address and enter it on your invite ref link (or use jake cooper’s url scheme)

switch back to your inbox, click the link

add a random delay

Now save the script, and you can run it automatically.

This is way slower and more complicated than the previous techniques, but you’ll have legitimate looking mails, and there’s no way for Oneplus to ban you. You won’t get place one, but a solid place in the top 1000 or so.

I decided to post this because I got really frustrated, and the OP team doesn’t even bother changing a single thing of their broken system. A simple captcha or, even better, image verification, would make the list much more realistic and enjoyable for users. While the idea of rewarding spreading the word of the OPT might be a bad idea, it backfired and it’s not too late to just disable it, but that#s just my opinion.

I’d really like to see a reply from Oneplus, and if I’m completely wromg about this approach not being able to be detected by them. here’s an address I can be reached at, obviously just created since I don’t post my address publicly to avoid spam: ruediger3257@gmail.com

Last but not least, I’m doing this for two reasons: firstly, I know a few people using this method a lot and even selling it as a service on eBay, and I really want that to stop. Also, I may have a chance to get an invite this way, and since my regular entry (I even stayed up very late in order to enter the list as soon as possible) is far from getting anything, it’s my only bet. Have fun.

Here’s some proof, that mail only has about 700 referred subscriptions and already is at place 150: https://oneplus.net/invites?kid=XNDZWE

(and yes, I know that one is gone for me — it’s not legitimate anyways)