AT&T Cracking Down on Unauthorized Tethering

[Full of Win]

If you don't want to pay or can't afford the extra $20 a month to tether, you shouldn't have a smart phone.

You ignore the fact that AT&T will not add a 4GB tether plan to unlimited iPhone data plans. Until AT&T offer the same 4GB tether plan to ALL iPhone users, many will tether outside of their contract just to keep their existing plans in place. Its not about cheating the system, at least for me it is not.

 

[CubusX]

Well...

You ignore the fact that AT&T will not add a 4GB tether plan to unlimited iPhone data plans. Until AT&T offer the same 4GB tether plan to ALL iPhone users, many will tether outside of their contract just to keep their existing plans in place. Its not about cheating the system, at least for me it is not.

Unlimited data is a thing of the past, it's coming to end on all the larger networks.

All AT&T needs to do is kill the unlimited data carry overs when contracts are renewed. Guess what? It could be coming and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Where are they going to go? T-Mobile or Sprint for worse service, I think not.

So, you have the unlimited data plan and you are tethering? If your not paying for thethering, you are cheating the system.

 

[Full of Win]

Unlimited data is a thing of the past, it's coming to end on all the larger networks.

All AT&T needs to do is kill the unlimited data carry overs when contracts are renewed. Guess what? It could be coming and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Where are they going to go? T-Mobile or Sprint for worse service, I think not.

So, you have the unlimited data plan and you are tethering? If your not paying for thethering, you are cheating the system.

I tether for 10 to 20 MB per month. I guess it's cheating, sure. However I justify it because AT&T will not allow me to add a 4 GB hotspot plan to my iPhone data plan. It's not that I'm trying to avoid a fee, it's just that AT&T will not charge me the fee in the first place. It's not the cost for me, as my phone and iPad data plans total close to 200/month.

Im sure many here would love to add the 4GB hotspot plan to their existing contracts, and not doing so does not mean they are trying to cheat the system.

As for it being unlimited, my contract for the iPhone data plan says I shall not go over 5 GB, and I almost never do. I do not expect unlimited data on my iPhone, I expect what is stipulated in the TOS I signed.

 

[Howdr]

I tether for 10 to 20 MB per month. I guess it's cheating, sure. However I justify it because AT&T will not allow me to add a 4 GB hotspot plan to my iPhone data plan. It's not that I'm trying to avoid a fee, it's just that AT&T will not charge me the fee in the first place. It's not the cost for me, as my phone and iPad data plans total close to 200/month.

Im sure many here would love to add the 4GB hotspot plan to their existing contracts, and not doing so does not mean they are trying to cheat the system.

As for it being unlimited, my contract for the iPhone data plan says I shall not go over 5 GB, and I almost never do. I do not expect unlimited data on my iPhone, I expect what is stipulated in the TOS I signed.

I don't think anyone is cheating except for At&t.

So many people are acting like we are in grade school and we have to "Follow the rules" set up to play the game. Guess what? If the rule is not ethical then we should not nor would be expected to follow it.

Soldiers at war are expected to not follow a rule that would be criminal.

At&t sells us an unlimited Data plan, then says in some language that when we go over 5GB of the unlimited data it can be considered abuse.

then goes on to say you can't tether, they have yet to provide any hard proof and facts that people are tethering, just that high data is used.

so whats the truth?

Can At&t tell your tethering?Theory is yes its possible,

Does any customer have a letter proving through showing the traced packets and data is identified ( like in a DNA case) as non phone data? NO

At&t has ( and this is per at&t) decided the high data, or in some cases, Data is being tethered.

This is unacceptable

You can't have a tether with unlimited

this is unacceptable

so I may tether like you at times, but I'm not cheating anyone, I pay my bill, keep the use to 5gb or lower and since I can't have my unlimited with tether I have little choice.

Fight the crap that big companies do, they want it all, your money and your money.

 

[tkambitsch]

AT&T to buy T-Mobile for $39 Billion

News Headline: AT&T to buy T-Mobile for $39 Billion

They must figure they can collect from those forced tethering upgrades!

 

[eyelobes]

Option 3; STOP trying to cheat the system, and START using your iDevice the way the manufacturer designed it and the way your carrier supports it. (Is it unfair? YES! Are all of us iPhone users getting hosed, even though there's now two carriers? YES)

And while you're at it, knock off the piracy with the napster/limewire/torrent crap.

(Yeah, I said it! SOMEBODY had to!)

Stop trying to be everyone's moral compass, our governmnet does that enough for us, kthxbye.

 

[dukebound85]

Stop trying to be everyone's moral compass, our governmnet does that enough for us, kthxbye.

as opposed to stop trying to rationalize violating a contract you agreed to?

 

[wpotere]

Another one drinking the AT&T koolaid

Really? How am I drinking the koolaid? I switched phones and have spoken to several reps as well as a friend that works for the company. Hate to say it, but it is what it is, get over it. You paid for unlimited data limited to the phone and phone only and signed/agreed to a contract. I am willing to bet that they have already consulted their lawyers to see if they have a leg to stand and done risk assessment on it to see if it is worth it. I guess it is considering they are finally taking action. You will be losing your tethering and they will be within their rights to take it. As for the me thinking the unlimited will be going away, they have already made it clear that no longer want it so I can't see it lasting a lot longer. Eventually you will want to upgrade that phone and they will simply say... "sorry, we no longer offer that plan, you will need to select a new plan". You will complain and they will simply wait for you to finish your little tantrum and then you will select a new plan. It has been happening for years and I don't see it changing now.

 

[eyelobes]

as opposed to stop trying to rationalize violating a contract you agreed to?

I'm on Verizon and have been using my unlimited plan as i see fit, on my cell phone for which i paid for and use as i see fit.

Would you like it if Comcast or FiOS or whatever said you can pay for their internet and get 5 mbps but only if you browse the internet, no hulu, no netflix.

Or better yet, here is your cable modem, you can only use our router with it though, and we are going to charge you for every port you use as a separate internet connection.

 

[Sparky9292]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Uhm, can we get back on a useful topic?

How much data per month will trigger the warning?
Does AT&T know you are using tethering?
How many people's bills actually went up $45?
For the people who got the warning, can you post what your last month data usage was? And what tethering app were u using?

Ok now you can go back to discussing if some rich AT&T CEO gets butthurt because you are using "illegal tethering".

 

[Apple 26.2]

I pay for unlimited, I should be permitted to use it as I wish. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[dukebound85]

I pay for unlimited, I should be permitted to use it as I wish. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

You pay for unlimited after willingly agreeing to the terms of course

I'm on Verizon and have been using my unlimited plan as i see fit, on my cell phone for which i paid for and use as i see fit.

If you violate the terms of the agreement you signed, just don't be surprised if they confront you about it

Would you like it if Comcast or FiOS or whatever said you can pay for their internet and get 5 mbps but only if you browse the internet, no hulu, no netflix.

Or better yet, here is your cable modem, you can only use our router with it though, and we are going to charge you for every port you use as a separate internet connection.

The thing is.....neither of your "cases" are relevant. There are no such stipulations that I willingly agreed to in those contracts. Now contrast that with the fact for your cell contract, you did agree to abide by their terms

I will say, if those cases were valid, no I would not like it but if I did agree to it and violated what I agreed to, I would hardly be shocked to be called out by them on it

 

[tekboi]

I'm not paying to tether, and it's as simple as that.

My phone is jailbroken and is not 4.3... i'm glad i'm didn't upgrade it just so at&t can **** me over even more than they already are.

Jailbreaking is your only option when using an iphone.

 

[jamesryanbell]

AT&T provides the service, so they make the rules. Don't like it? Move carriers.

THEY WILL DECIDE HOW YOU USE YOUR DATA.

/discussion


Oh wait, that's AT&T's reply.

Mine was supposed to be: "That sucks".

Sorry about the confusion.

 

[wpotere]

I hope AT&T starts doing this and all the jailbreakers who go around the system lose their unlimited data, get their phones turned off, and/or get sued for breach of contract by AT&T. Thanks to the jailbreaks using huge amounts of data the unlimited data plan was taken off the table for everyone.

Don't lump all jailbreakers in with ther folks that are tethering. Some of us that are jailbroken do it to get additional features like LockInfo etc... There is more to jailbreaking than just tethering.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Don't lump all jailbreakers in with ther folks that are tethering. Some of us that are jailbroken do it to get additional features like LockInfo etc... There is more to jailbreaking than just tethering.

Exactly. Out of all jailbreakers I'd guess that under 1% are using craploads of data by tethering.

 

[einmusiker]

Really? How am I drinking the koolaid? I switched phones and have spoken to several reps as well as a friend that works for the company. Hate to say it, but it is what it is, get over it. You paid for unlimited data limited to the phone and phone only and signed/agreed to a contract. I am willing to bet that they have already consulted their lawyers to see if they have a leg to stand and done risk assessment on it to see if it is worth it. I guess it is considering they are finally taking action. You will be losing your tethering and they will be within their rights to take it. As for the me thinking the unlimited will be going away, they have already made it clear that no longer want it so I can't see it lasting a lot longer. Eventually you will want to upgrade that phone and they will simply say... "sorry, we no longer offer that plan, you will need to select a new plan". You will complain and they will simply wait for you to finish your little tantrum and then you will select a new plan. It has been happening for years and I don't see it changing now.

You drink the kool aid because you willngly gave up your unlimited data plan when you didn't have to. Good little boy, sit ubu sit

 

[physicsguy13]

When I was on Verizon I had unlimited data on my windows mobile phone. The first time that I tried to tether I was sent to a Verion site saying I needed to add tethering to my plan to use it (it was 15 dollars back then). When I discovered custom ROMs they had the ability to stealth tether so that Verion couldn't tell you you were tethering. One time it stopped working an the providers could tell the phone was tethered so they were charged huge data bills because that data was not partvof their plan.

If the apps that people are using can be detected s tethering, ATT will probably use that info to change your plan. ATT is there to make as much money s possible so is anyone really surprised?

ATT has the right to change the terms of the contract once you are violating them. Whether it should be a violation is not the point, it is and this is how they have chosen to handle it.

 

[wpotere]

You drink the kool aid because you willngly gave up your unlimited data plan when you didn't have to. Good little boy, sit ubu sit

See, that shows how smart you actually are. I did have to give up my plan as that was an IPHONE plan and I no longer use my iPhone. Before you go all "then why are you here", my wife still has one. Guess what, it is unlimited data...

 

[CubusX]

Data suckers

More than one percent, and the majority of jailbreakers are using MyWi to tether. Whether it is a lot of data or a little data it does not mater, you are using a service for free that you should be paying to use.

That's the bottom line. Now that AT&T is moving to buy T-Mobile, cheap plans and unlimited data are gone.

Suck it while you can cause wiithin the next year or two say goodbye.

Then you will be on lower capped data plan or forced to pay for it.

 

[CubusX]

No soup for you!!!

I hope this is true and that have a way of proving it.

That way they send you a letter informing you they switched your beloved unlimited plan to one of the capped plans due to breach of contract on your end. You try to complain and have your unlimited data plan reinstated and your denied.

Curb all this stealing, over usage, and breach of contracts.

 

[Reimer]

This entire argument truly is ridiculous. Do you think your home ISP would be perfectly fine with you setting up a public wifi network for your entire neighborhood to use, resulting in data usage that is exponential than intended? No.

I can't stand AT&T just as much as the next person in this thread and would gladly switch to Verizon if their coverage was better in my area, but the people butt-hurt that their service provider wants them to pay for a feature they're currently not paying for really makes no sense to me. Are we all supposed to pay for you instead? Stop being cheap.

A better comparison would be whether your ISP would allow the use of a router for your own home network. Ten years ago, home routers weren't that common. Your ISP would charge you for extra IPs if you had more than one computer.

In this case, a fee for tethering is essentially double-dipping, charging you twice for the same data you're already paying for.

The "Well, it's in your contract so tough ****" argument is ridiculous especially with the news of the T-Mobile acquisition. So not only is there fewer choice in the market, you're essentially saying they should be able to impose any BS fees they want as long as it's in the contract.

 

[DiamondMac]

More than one percent, and the majority of jailbreakers are using MyWi to tether. Whether it is a lot of data or a little data it does not mater, you are using a service for free that you should be paying to use.

That's the bottom line. Now that AT&T is moving to buy T-Mobile, cheap plans and unlimited data are gone.

Suck it while you can cause wiithin the next year or two say goodbye.

Then you will be on lower capped data plan or forced to pay for it.

Unlimited plans are already gone by just about everyone

Caps will continue to stay at their current levels or even DROPPED while overages/penalties are increased

More money = Less Data

 

[bachelier]

So if you're sticking at 4.1.0 and they aren't monitoring, then they should be monitoring 3.x even less, no?

All the more reason for me to stick with 3.1.3 on my 3G.

BL.

Agree. I just wish there was a hack to get flash on it.

 

[bachelier]

Actually the way they are most likely doing this and the way most carriers do it is using some deep packet inspection kit or maybe even a transparent proxy.

They can look for browsing traffic on port 80 then simply pick out any users where the user agent string is that of a computer OS so Windows|Mac|Linux.

2 options to get around it are: either change your browsers UA to that of the iPhone although this will often give you mobile sites or better still send everything down a VPN, that way its encrypted and they can;t see what your doing just how many bytes High VPN usage shouldn't be odd either as the iPhone has a VPN client so you could feasibly be using that.

(Used to work in a carrier designing these systems so I should know!)

Which VPN do you recommend?