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What's with this 5GB myth? There is no limit! the 5GB cap is for DataConnect or LaptopConnect cards.

oh, never knew... just had heard that "unlimited" really meant 5gb? didn't know it only applied to air cards! Thanks for the info :D
 
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.
 
I've tethered maybe 50mb max this cycle and am now at 5123.75mb with 17 days left, mostly from netflix. I was going to try and use as much data as I could WITHOUT tethering to see if it got the notice, but my internet went down for a while and that plan went out the window.

What happens if you get the notice and call them up and say you weren't tethering? Will they just note it on your account and let you go on tethering and not bug you? That would be nice...

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.
 
How about you all just pay for what you are using. I agree that tethering is expensive but you have to pay for what you want or use.

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.
 
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.

You aren't going to get unlimited data from verizon either...
 
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.
 
What iOS version are you guys using when received tethering notice?

No one seems to mention how much data they are using in either threads :rolleyes:

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).
 
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).

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.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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...
 
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...

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.
 
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.
 
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.
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.
 
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