Apparently this is how AT&T is tracking tethering

[nateDEEZY]

“Jailbroken iPhones typically use the same tethering technique as a standard iPhone, the one that’s already present in iOS. This method exposes tethering activity quite readily, because the iPhone, when in tethering mode, sends traffic through an alternate APN (AT&T access point/router) for the express purpose of identifying the traffic as tethered data. This makes it extremely easy for AT&T to identify whether or not an iOS device is utilizing tethering, and just how much of their data is consumed via tethering.

Some tethering applications for iOS make use of alternative methods and route tethered traffic through the phone’s normal data APN, but by and large, most jailbreakers stick with the stock application because it’s easy to use and doesn’t require any complicated setup. In fact, many iPhone users jailbreak for the sole purpose of avoiding AT&T’s tethering fees (for why, see next section). These are the people AT&T’s is going after.”

Sourcehttp://www.redmondpie.com/how-att-tracks-unauthorized-tethering-on-your-jailbroken-iphone-and-how-to-hide-it-from-them/

 

[cookiesnfooty]

Sourcehttp://www.redmondpie.com/how-att-tracks-unauthorized-tethering-on-your-jailbroken-iphone-and-how-to-hide-it-from-them/

I doubt that's true as the phone can only use the data available to it surely and if your network settings are set a certain way I doubt it would ignore this.

On reading the article I can't help but feel it's a marketing ploy for PDAnet.

 

[terraphantm]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I dont know about mywi, but tetherme uses the phone APN for tethering. Even people who use the commcenter hack with a custom ipcc usually set it up to use the phone APN. So I'm pretty sure that's not how AT&T is tracking tethering. That is how they *used* to do it back in the days before smart phones though. (phone AP would use data from dataplan, while tethering APN would result in paying for every kb)

 

[biohead]

I know on O2's settings plist, there is a seperate APN set for tethering data to the standard one for mobile data (The standard APN is idata.o2.co.uk, and the tethering is modem.o2.co.uk - from Phil A.).

An easy work around is go into that plist, find the APN settings and delete all other entries apart from the standard mobile APN one... then change the typemask integer from 7 to 55 to enable tethering. You need the commcenter hack though.

Working for me on O2, and my bill doesn't show the tethering APN ever making a connection, just idata.o2.co.uk.

 

[Phil A.]

I know on O2's settings plist, there is a seperate APN set for tethering data to the standard one for mobile data (The standard APN is idata.o2.co.uk, and the tethering I THINK is mobile.o2.co.uk).

An easy work around is go into that plist, find the APN settings and delete all other entries apart from the standard mobile APN one... then change the typemask integer from 7 to 55 to enable tethering. You need the commcenter hack though.

Image

Working for me on O2, and my bill doesn't show the tethering APN ever making a connection, just idata.o2.co.uk.

You are correct that O2 have a separate APN for tethering, but it's modem.o2.co.uk (mobile.o2.co.uk is the one for non-iphone smartphones). I have official tethering on my O2 contract and they do separate out the usage between the two APNs. If you have a tethering app that doesn't change the APN then you will get caught in very short order!

I'm pretty sure that AT&T use various methods to catch unauthorised tethering: the easiest one is the APN which will catch all the low hanging fruit, but I think they'll go for more complex methods once they've finished with that.

 

[Carlanga]

not correct, seems like a ploy for people to buy a specific app.