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Questions for those that received TETHERING notice from AT&T

Got caught tethering, got a warning then second text message, then a letter in the mail (dated same day as the second text message)

I continued to think AT&T was bluffing until I received the letter in the mail.

Went online to check my account details, and my plan had indeed been changed to the corporate 4gb tethering plan

called at&t, on the phone for 20-30 minutes

some facts

a) I was using a secure VPN, so that's not a work around
b) I was only using 5-6gb's a month so I wasn't a power user
c) Using latest version of MIWI

CSR would not specifically say how they caught me, but apparently after the first text message your account gets flagged. They look at the data, and notice tags that stands out ( mozilla browser tags etc)

I pleaded with them and they said they would revert back to the unlimited plan but my account will remain flagged for some time :/

Uninstalled MIWI :.(

So cliffs note

a) If you haven't received a warning text = your account has not being flagged = you are free to tether
b) If you received a warning text = STOP tethering, you may be able to call AT&T and have your account unflagged by playing innocent

peace
 
Shenaniganz,

Thanks for this very useful information.

Much appreciated.

Here's the bottom line as to why many of us
continue to illegally tether rather than immediately
sign up for a plan.

Let's face it...

The money is not the real issue here.

It's the fact that AT&T takes you off your unlimited plan.

If AT&T would treat TETHERING and IPHONE DATA separately,
there would be no issues here.

I would gladly pay for my tethering usage (heck, it's only
$20 more per month for 4GB data), but I still want unlimited
usage on my iPhone.

How about leveling the playing field a little bit, AT&T?
 
Just got the message today, I very rarely tether, and if I do, its to my iPod touch or iPad, never a laptop.

I use both TetherMe and MyWi

I do around 5-6 gigs a month, but thats strickly from my iPhone 4 streaming pandora, XM and TuneInRadio throught the day

my plan is still the same unlimited data
 
Registered to provide my experience

Been an AT&T customer for few years now. I've had the 3GS Iphone for couple of years and jailbroke it when I first got it couple years ago. I immediately got PDANet to tether and have been tethering since I got the phone. Everything was okay until about last month when I initially got my first text message about tethering. I called them at that time and played dumb. They told me that is there warning and if I continue to tether the $45 tethering plan will be added the following week. I continued to tether and following week came and gone but there was no change in plan. I then get a second text message and a letter in the mail just last week saying that my plan has been updated with the $45 tethering plan. So, I call them again. They indicated that I am still tetheering and I continued to down play it by saying that I'm not but they insisted that I am tethering and the tethering plan will be charged. There was no indication that they were going to remove the tethering charge. I averaged about 10GB-13GB a month since this is my only internet connnection.

So, I finally decided to break my contract and terminate service with ATT since they are nickeling and diming everything and went with another service provider which will reduce my cost dramatically. So, if ATT want to lose business, I'm happy to pay the ETF since I will recover the loss by saving a lot more from my current service. Just wanted to share my experience, that's all. Good luck to everyone.
 
I don't blame people for changing service.

If AT&T is going to take away my unlimited plan
even if I choose a tethering plan I would rather keep
my unlimited plan and just go with another company's
wireless tethering plan.

Of course, some people, such as the previous poster,
may just leave the company completely.
 
One would expect that after signing a contract and thus agreeing to pay up to 2300$ over the course of two years to AT&T, they would let you make full use of the service you're paying a fortune for...
 
Sparky9292 said:
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)



Call and asks for the specific times that you were tethering.
Click to expand...

I did when I went through it with ATT and they told me they can't give an exact date but the tethering happened at some point before the day before I called. Pushed for the info a million different ways and got nothing more.
 
welp...my cycle ends on the 18th.:(

I uninstalled tetherme and pdanet 2 weeks ago.

I just went to the hotspot option in settings and i turned it on.....with no error "you have to pay for that feature".

I'm assuming att has activated my tethering and My unlimited data will probably be gone in 3 days. lol

:cool:

i got about 700GBs out of it....I ain't mad at ya att.
 
I've been at home for the last week after the school year ended and have been tethering bit more than usual since AT&T's wireless service is a bit faster than our AT&T dsl (parents scaled back the dsl plan to save money). Although I use MyWi OnDemand via Bluetooth and a VPN, I see some others have been caught while using this same setup. I guess it's only a matter of time til I get flagged eventually, huh? I usually only otherwise tether to my iPad to check mail, get articles, and get to my Dropbox on the bus until i get to campus where there's wifi.

Although, I haven't gone over 1GB in a while and have only hit about 5GB a handful of times, I suppose I'll be a-ok just paying for the 4GB tethering plan since overages really wouldnt be the problem. However, the problem for me is the extra $15. Being a college student, that adds up in two years.

Also, I received an email from AT&T saying how iOS 4.3 now has the Hotspot feature and how I should upgrade and change my plan, but I'm not sure if this was simply a promotional email or if they suspect that I've been tethering.
 
bmwhd said:
Huh. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1171190/
Click to expand...

That thread is irrelevant to your original theory that ATT is excluding developers from getting the illegal tethering notice.

The iOS5 Beta 1 let the OP, a Verizon customer, not an ATT customer, enable Personal Hotspot. Totally unrelated to the question of will the guy get a bill from Verizon or a warning notice from them.

Nice try starting up an almost month old exchange.
 
I received an email yesterday saying that if I continue to tether, they would change my service on june 24th.

The thing is, I don't tether. Sure i'm jailbroken, but I have no use for tethering I use my iphone mostly when I am at work. I do download free albums from bandcamp (some unknown artists offer their music for free) with safari download plugin.

I'm a bit irritated over the fact that they accused me when they obviously have no proof.

I've used 2.3 gbs of data and today is the last day of my cycle.
 
Missjenna said:
I received an email yesterday saying that if I continue to tether, they would change my service on june 24th.

The thing is, I don't tether. Sure i'm jailbroken, but I have no use for tethering I use my iphone mostly when I am at work. I do download free albums from bandcamp (some unknown artists offer their music for free) with safari download plugin.

I'm a bit irritated over the fact that they accused me when they obviously have no proof.

I've used 2.3 gbs of data and today is the last day of my cycle.
Click to expand...

I don't really understand how they're getting away with accusing people of tethering without providing proof. If they're making the accusation, the burden of proof should be on them. If I was accused of tethering and I wasn't actually tethering, I would be raising h3ll and demanding that they tell me exactly when they think I tethered and for how long and I would want some type of proof. If they can't tell you when you tethered, how the heck can they prove that you actually did it? I personally have not tethered since January and have not received any type of notice but I never went over 1.2GB in any one billing period either (used mywi at the time). I don't really plan to use tethering again unless I absolutely need to (I'm not one of those people that likes to use it just to stick it to the man:confused:), but if they're going to accuse me of something they better at least have some proof to back it up.

If I was in your shoes, I would report this to the BBB or something. They can't go around accusing people who aren't tethering; however, I would make da*n sure I was being truthful before I go reporting anything to the BBB or anyone else. If they are just trying to strong arm people into giving up their unlimited data plans, that's wrong and they should be stopped.
 
Last edited:
Yeah I'd raise hell as well... I use 6-12 GB a month downloading stuff to my phone and they don't mess with me. As well as try shouldn't mess with me since I've never tethered (not even when you could without messages)
 
TC25 said:
That thread is irrelevant to your original theory that ATT is excluding developers from getting the illegal tethering notice.

The iOS5 Beta 1 let the OP, a Verizon customer, not an ATT customer, enable Personal Hotspot. Totally unrelated to the question of will the guy get a bill from Verizon or a warning notice from them.

Nice try starting up an almost month old exchange.
Click to expand...

Actually it's not. The same thing occurred during the 4.0 beta on AT&T and a bunch of us used the hotspot back then on our development devices. My point being it remains conceivable that this information is shared with the carriers and that could explain why many folks have not received any notice yet have tethered a bunch.
 
psywzrd said:
I don't really understand how they're getting away with accusing people of tethering without providing proof. If they're making the accusation, the burden of proof should be on them. If I was accused of tethering and I wasn't actually tethering, I would be raising h3ll and demanding that they tell me exactly when they think I tethered and for how long and I would want some type of proof. If they can't tell you when you tethered, how the heck can they prove that you actually did it? I personally have not tethered since January and have not received any type of notice but I never went over 1.2GB in any one billing period either (used mywi at the time). I don't really plan to use tethering again unless I absolutely need to (I'm not one of those people that likes to use it just to stick it to the man:confused:), but if they're going to accuse me of something they better at least have some proof to back it up.

If I was in your shoes, I would report this to the BBB or something. They can't go around accusing people who aren't tethering; however, I would make da*n sure I was being truthful before I go reporting anything to the BBB or anyone else. If they are just trying to strong arm people into giving up their unlimited data plans, that's wrong and they should be stopped.
Click to expand...

I ended up getting a text message this morning about tethering. I was livid. I JUST called them to tell them I don't tether. I ended up driving to the at&t store 35 minutes away to SHOW them that I have no tethering apps installed. I admitted that I was jailbroken, but I have absolutely no use for tethering. I showed her every app installed in cydia, told her exactly what they all do. The rep I was working with was great though. She has been to the town I live in. She KNOWS that there is only one tower in my town and that I don't get very good coverage. She knows that I have a Microcell in order to have decent service at my house.

She told the rep on the phone all of that, and assured me that my plan will not be messed with. The rep on the phone said that there must be something triggering the tethering notices. The only thing I can think of is I use the Safari download plugin to download free albums from bandcamp, and I told the rep that. She said to not use the plugin for a bit just to see if that might be the culprit triggering the tethering notices.

I just really hope that this is all taken care of.
 
ratzzo said:
One would expect that after signing a contract and thus agreeing to pay up to 2300$ over the course of two years to AT&T, they would let you make full use of the service you're paying a fortune for...
Click to expand...

You kind of left out that the same contract youagreed too, prevents you from tethering. Funny how irate folks get when the fact is you have already agreed not to tether.
 
NJRonbo said:
Curious to see how many people in this
forum actually received a text message
from AT&T.

For anyone that received a text message
from AT&T alerting them of thier unauthorized
tethering....

1. What do you intend to do? Call AT&T or
just keep tethering?

2. How much data were you using at the
point that AT&T contacted you?
Click to expand...

Do you have something special in mind ?
 
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)

rans0m00 said:
Sparky9292 said:
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)



Call and asks for the specific times that you were tethering.
Click to expand...

I did when I went through it with ATT and they told me they can't give an exact date but the tethering happened at some point before the day before I called. Pushed for the info a million different ways and got nothing more.
Click to expand...

That's soooooooo bullshiiit
 
After almost 500 posts of people speculating about how ATT is identifying tethering and what the recipients of the text/email have in common, perhaps it's no more complicated than;

1. ATT is not identifying tethering
2. The thing the recipients have in common is they have the unlimited data plan.

What better way to get people off the unlimited plan than accuse them of 'illegal' tethering.

Has anyone with the 200mb or 2 gig data plan received these warnings?
 
TC25 said:
After almost 500 posts of people speculating about how ATT is identifying tethering and what the recipients of the text/email have in common, perhaps it's no more complicated than;

1. ATT is not identifying tethering
2. The thing the recipients have in common is they have the unlimited data plan.

What better way to get people off the unlimited plan than accuse them of 'illegal' tethering.

Has anyone with the 200mb or 2 gig data plan received these warnings?
Click to expand...

I can see why some would jump to that conclusion. But all of the data people have been sharing over this board and the modmyi.com board have led most of us to the following conclusions:

- They are only looking at unlimited plans right now
- They are using a combination of APN & TTL, which is why tetherme/commcenter hack users that have changed the TTL on their laptops and JB iPads haven't been getting flags
- There are some things that may cause false positives (microcells, LogMeIn, Safari plug-ins), although this is assuming the forumgoers are being honest.

To cover all my bases, I did the commcenter hack and edited the carrier.plist to ensure the "broadband" APN wasn't even an option. Then I changed the TTL on my laptop and did some light tethering, probably about 50mb of web surfing, about a week ago. No notice yet. After the iPad2 JB comes out, hopefully this week, I'll change the TTL on that and do the same. If I don't get another notice (one in March so far), I'll feel comfortable tethering going forward.
 
I did the commcenter hack and edited the carrier.plist to ensure the "broadband" APN wasn't even an option.
Click to expand...

Jay,

Are there directions posted anywhere on how to
do this kind of edit to your iPhone?
 
I guess my mom is tethering strong.. to this day.
I went in her room yesterday which is kinda far away form the router.. she frequently complains about a bad signal.

She was tethering instead because it was faster... She does this a lot I guess...

She is a low usage customer so we probably wont get flagged but idk, I have been tethering on and off and she has been tethering on and off for as long as I can remember with no notice.

I tether to phones computers anything.
She mostly tethers to her iPad.

doesn't seem consistent with what some people have said.
^
Oh, and shes using a very old version of MyWi, one of the ones without the block due to the fact she doesnt know how to update it.
 
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