xxBURT0Nxx
macrumors 68020
oh, never knew... just had heard that "unlimited" really meant 5gb? didn't know it only applied to air cards! Thanks for the info 😀
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Questions for those that received TETHERING notice from AT&T
- Thread starter NJRonbo
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oh, never knew... just had heard that "unlimited" really meant 5gb? didn't know it only applied to air cards! Thanks for the info 😀
I think At&t tells people that unlimited has a 5gb "soft cap" to try and get them to not go crazy with the data usage.
buzzfgo
macrumors member
That's kind of what we are hoping. 🙂
And the April 16th cut is not the first batch of letters. I'm pretty sure it started last month and the dead line for that one has come and gone. Seems weird that we have not heard anything from it.
Chopstick217
macrumors regular
I've been using 3-5gb monthly and haven't received the notice. Could it be because I only tether to my iPad?
id pay for tethering, but legit tethering means no more unlimited data. eff you at&t.. ill play stupid, then if they change my plan, im switching to verizon.
the fact that a couple of people here who DON'T tether said they too go the notice proves that at&t have no way of knowing for sure who's tethering or not.
xxBURT0Nxx
macrumors 68020
Just received a txt yesterday, but no email. Not a big issue for me though, if they change my plan I'll drop to 200mb, because other then tethering I hardly ever use the phone's web.
3-7 gb a month pretty much all netflix, from letting the nephews stream to the pc. I use both tetherme and mywi
Consultant
macrumors G5
What iOS version are you guys using when received tethering notice?
Exactly, I tether but I don't abuse it. With tether I use under a few GB of data per month. And somehow I didn't receive any tethering notice(s).
Exactly, I tether but I don't abuse it. With tether I use under a few GB of data per month. And somehow I didn't receive any tethering notice(s).
I tether to my unlimited data iPad as well. Are they sending out notices only for iPhones or for iPads to?
xxBURT0Nxx
macrumors 68020
all iOS versions from 3.1 to 4.3 have received the texts, people who don't even tether have also received them. This proves att doesn't really even know who is tethering, they just are sending out the notices to heavy data users trying to get them to move from the unlimited plan to the capped 2 and 4gb data plans that they now offer. if you get the message from att just call 'em tell em you don't tether and if they change your data plan you are leaving for another carrier...
AT&T could check who hits the IP address of Cydia and if you have high data usage assume you're tethering.
xxBURT0Nxx
macrumors 68020
just because you have a jailbroken iphone and use a lot of data does not mean you tether....
Th3d0ctor
macrumors member
Yeah, I really doubt this is what they're doing. Out of all the ways people think AT&T is targeting I STILL think it's just high data users with unlimited data plans.
fishmd
macrumors 68000
What I wonder is if there is anyone out there who has gotten "the message" who is already on say the 2 GB data plan, but not paying the additional 20$ to tether. It would be interesting if anyone out there has.
If I have to stop tethering to keep my unlimited plan, Id rather do that with Verizon, plus, they lose my business.
I have a couple questions about this. First, have the people at mywi or tetherme had any input about this? I would think they would be on top of this and have some kind of blog or forum to address this with updates and info.
Also, I have not tethered yet but my thinking is that it is detectable which hardware is connected to the internet and they may be able to monitor that. If I go to yahoo.com with my iphone i get yahoo for iphone, if i use my ipad I get the yahoo for tablet. Similar for macrumors. They gotta know somehow, plus when I hit some sites from my iphone I get the popup asking if i would like to download the free app for the site from the app store...... so somewhere along the line someone knows exactly which device is pulling info..... I wonder if you could use a mac spoofer from cydia on an ipad and spoof your phone mac... might cause a conflict though and then you would get the iphone view of webpages...
Also, I have not tethered yet but my thinking is that it is detectable which hardware is connected to the internet and they may be able to monitor that. If I go to yahoo.com with my iphone i get yahoo for iphone, if i use my ipad I get the yahoo for tablet. Similar for macrumors. They gotta know somehow, plus when I hit some sites from my iphone I get the popup asking if i would like to download the free app for the site from the app store...... so somewhere along the line someone knows exactly which device is pulling info..... I wonder if you could use a mac spoofer from cydia on an ipad and spoof your phone mac... might cause a conflict though and then you would get the iphone view of webpages...
That's called a browser user agent, and it's what web designers use to provide different site builds for different devices. This can be faked/changed quite easily using a variety of 3rd party browsers available from Apple's own app store, so I this would be very unreliable information with which to detect tethering usage.
Thanks for the info... good to know. We could always claim we do not tether and maybe they are picking up changes we have in our browser.
They don't need to perform that level of packet analysis. The industry standard way of finding routers on your network is far simpler (and more reliable). They only need to look for traffic with an end-point an extra hop away from your phone. However this may require reconfigurationat the tower, so some locations may not be enabled for monitoring yet.
Beyond that, AT&T needs to then determine which accounts should be notified first (they don't want to overwhelm customer service by doing it all in one shot). It's at this point that they probably cherry pick the high volume users.
BTW - It may be possible to cloak tethering traffic from your phone, but currently none of the tethering solutions make any attempt to hide.