What can AT&T do if you get busted using MyWi??

[GadgetAddict]

As many many others I'm anxiously but patiently waiting for the iP4 jailbreak in order to use MyWi. I've read numerous posts about people using their iPhones as wifi hotspots without any problems. However, given the fact that this is against AT&T policies, what will happen if you get caught? Will they charge you the $20 tethering fee? Will they go as far as canceling your contract? (I highly doubt that) It shouldn't be that difficult for them to get suspicious if you go from 300-400Mb a month to 1.5Gb or more.

Looking forward to your posts...

 

[Arisian]

As many many others I'm anxiously but patiently waiting for the iP4 jailbreak in order to use MyWi. I've read numerous posts about people using their iPhones as wifi hotspots without any problems. However, given the fact that this is against AT&T policies, what will happen if you get caught? Will they charge you the $20 tethering fee? Will they go as far as canceling your contract? (I highly doubt that) It shouldn't be that difficult for them to get suspicious if you go from 300-400Mb a month to 1.5Gb or more.

Looking forward to your posts...

Im pretty sure it's very difficult for them to 'catch' you - furthermore, my guess is that regular store employees couldn't care less.

Third, I don't know what they would do if they actually caught you. If they caught you, I'd probably personally remind them of all the stupid stuff they do.

Good question though.

 

[mgamber]

As many many others I'm anxiously but patiently waiting for the iP4 jailbreak in order to use MyWi. I've read numerous posts about people using their iPhones as wifi hotspots without any problems. However, given the fact that this is against AT&T policies, what will happen if you get caught? Will they charge you the $20 tethering fee? Will they go as far as canceling your contract? (I highly doubt that) It shouldn't be that difficult for them to get suspicious if you go from 300-400Mb a month to 1.5Gb or more.

Looking forward to your posts...

Who knows. If I had to guess, it would probably be hard to prove you were actually tethering so they'd probably just kick you off, cancel your contract and that would be that if they felt you were abusing the system month after month. I doubt it would be MyWi tho, they don't care about that. It's an overall pattern of abuse they look for. I wonder about it at times because I watch a LOT of baseball using MLB at Bat and Slingplayer and they suck down a lot of data. On one hand it's a bunch of gigs every month but on the other hand my phone isn't even jailbroken, they're "approved" apps and it's only during MLB season so I don't worry about it.

 

[dgstan]

I'm not really worried about data spikes exposing me. If I look at my data usage, it varies greatly depending on how many times I feel the need to watch the "Bad Romance" video.

I wonder, however, if it might give you away if you were to visit and spend a lot of time on Flash-enabled sites. I'm not saying AT&T is ever going to bother looking at your web history or if they're even smart enough to ferret it out, but if they did, it would be pretty obvious.

I've thought about this as my daughter loves her Club Penguin and has used my MyWi to access it on occasion.

 

[-aggie-]

Who knows. If I had to guess, it would probably be hard to prove you were actually tethering so they'd probably just kick you off, cancel your contract and that would be that if they felt you were abusing the system month after month. I doubt it would be MyWi tho, they don't care about that. It's an overall pattern of abuse they look for. I wonder about it at times because I watch a LOT of baseball using MLB at Bat and Slingplayer and they suck down a lot of data. On one hand it's a bunch of gigs every month but on the other hand my phone isn't even jailbroken, they're "approved" apps and it's only during MLB season so I don't worry about it.

This is what I would think as well. They’d still have a hard time proving it though, so you might have a case to get back on the contract if you wanted to get a lawyer.

 

[mgamber]

This is what I would think as well. They’d still have a hard time proving it though, so you might have a case to get back on the contract if you wanted to get a lawyer.

Proving tethering no but proving abuse yes. Well, I'd hope so, it's their network. When AT&T kicked a bunch of people off for abuse some time ago, they didn't cite any specific reasons as far as I can recall, just that they were abusing either the network or support systems. In fact, as I recall, most of them were given the heave ho because they constantly called support and complained about nonsense, not because they were abusing the network. Anyone know how many people have been axed because of system abuse?

 

[Nrwrit3r]

I'm not really worried about data spikes exposing me. If I look at my data usage, it varies greatly depending on how many times I feel the need to watch the "Bad Romance" video.

I wonder, however, if it might give you away if you were to visit and spend a lot of time on Flash-enabled sites. I'm not saying AT&T is ever going to bother looking at your web history or if they're even smart enough to ferret it out, but if they did, it would be pretty obvious.

I've thought about this as my daughter loves her Club Penguin and has used my MyWi to access it on occasion.

Hmm that is interesting - I would be using it for flash enabled sites too. And java and other ones. But I feel like this might be like torrenting, where so many people do it that they only go after those that do it A LOT (like maybe people who cancel their home internet and use their iphone as their only internet source). Having it for places such as an airport or train ride I think would be okay.

 

[Applejuiced]

You're going to jail

 

[GadgetAddict]

You're going to jail

Hehe.. if the iPhone eventually goes on Verizon and that doesn't put them out of business then locking up their customers for using MyWi certainly would...

The way I see it, if you pay for 200Mb, 2Gb or unlimited (5Gb) they shouldn't even care how you use them! As long as you stay within the limit there is no abuse. The issue would be tethering your phone without paying the $20 fee because you hacked it somehow. So how could they prove you tethered?

 

[Applejuiced]

The way I see it, if you pay for 200Mb, 2Gb or unlimited (5Gb) they shouldn't even care how you use them! As long as you stay within the limit there is no abuse.

I hear you.
Thats how it is in most other countries.
Your plan includes 1GB of data for example it doesnt matter how you use it if its tethering your computer or using youtube or pandora all day. If you go over then you'd pay addtional charges.
I dont think they can prove or even if they even bother to check.
The got millions of users and those that JB and tether illegally would not be that many or worth wasting time and resources on is my guess.
We'll see how it plays.

 

[jammybastard]

Im pretty sure it's very difficult for them to 'catch' you - furthermore, my guess is that regular store employees couldn't care less.

...or they don't know what "MyWI" is?

One employees at my local AT&T store got a look at my Iphone when I was in demoing
the IP4 because I handed it to her to hold onto while I played.
"MyWI" is on the first page and she didn't even know what it was, nor did she care.

ATT store reps are paid to do one thing: sell you a phone.
They aren't paid to be knowledgable about apps. That's Apple's job.

So to get paranoid about someone noticing it, or even using it for tethering is silly.
Especially if your bandwidth usage isn't excessive.

BTW - I was recently on a job without any WIFI, but I did have 3G via my IP3 (unlimited data).
I ran MyWI and tethered my MBP as well another person's MBP and an IPad to it
for 6 hours a day, 11 days straight.
The largest file we downloaded as the 64bit vers. of VLC Player. The rest of the time it was for email and surfing.

Am I worried about AT&T catching me and taking some sort of action?
Nope.
They've got bigger issues to deal with.

 

[gwynne]

1st offense: Caning

2nd offense: You're forced to read the entire "Twilight" book series and take a series of written exams to prove you were paying attention.

3rd offense: They take away your iPhone and replace it with a Microsoft "Kin".

 

[Applejuiced]

1st offense: Caning

2nd offense: You're forced to read the entire "Twilight" book series and take a series of written exams to prove you were paying attention.

3rd offense: They take away your iPhone and replace it with a Microsoft "Kin".

LMAO

 

[jav6454]

1st offense: Caning

2nd offense: You're forced to read the entire "Twilight" book series and take a series of written exams to prove you were paying attention.

3rd offense: They take away your iPhone and replace it with a Microsoft "Kin".

... 'nuff posted for me.

 

[brian540]

the worst they could do is terminate your contract and if they do that I don't believe you would even pay the term fee since it was their own termination... and why would they want to lose a client =) and they would lose money on the subsy for your phone to cancel..

 

[psycuatic]

I was wondering about this as my data usage since getting MyWi is pretty much the same as my lifetime usage before getting it.

 

[eastercat]

They could make you pay the difference in data usage fees. Have they actually done so? If they have, I'm sure somebody would be complaining about how their illegal tethering got them hit with $200 of usage fees.

 

[MikePA]

However, given the fact that this is against AT&T policies, what will happen if you get caught? Will they charge you the $20 tethering fee? Will they go as far as canceling your contract? (I highly doubt that) It shouldn't be that difficult for them to get suspicious if you go from 300-400Mb a month to 1.5Gb or more.

The simplest and most correct answer is to read the ATT license agreement.

Why would going from 400mb to 1.5 gigs be suspicious? A couple of books, a couple of videos could explain that. They'd have to investigate further to determine if the content downloaded wouldn't make sense for an iPhone, e.g., a Windows7 Service Pack. Even then, with the capability to ftp from your iPhone, it wouldn't be certain the traffic was from tethering.

Others have said the content of the IP packets themselves are the best way, not amount of data transferred, to identify tethering. I've never looked at them, so I can't confirm this.

 

[err404]

Don't kid yourself. It's easy from them to detect and track your tethering usage since the phone is forwarding traffic and acting like a router. They have been logging this for the last 18 months and the internal policy right now is to ignore it and just go by the established usage caps (unless it's extremely abusive in he case of the 'unlimited 5GB soft cap' plans).
The penalty is in your TOS agreement and is either adjusting your plan to the correct features or terminating your service.

 

[psycuatic]

I hope that they don't decide to start caring all of a sudden

 

[iPadThai]

Don't kid yourself. It's easy from them to detect and track your tethering usage since the phone is forwarding traffic and acting like a router. They have been logging this for the last 18 months and the internal policy right now is to ignore it and just go by the established usage caps (unless it's extremely abusive in he case of the 'unlimited 5GB soft cap' plans).
The penalty is in your TOS agreement and is either adjusting your plan to the correct features or terminating your service.

They cannot detect anything. The only way they can detect anything out of the ordinary is if your device connects to certain services using specific ports and/or host names. They would have to filter out each and every host you hit on your dynamic ip. This isn't gonna happen.

The other way they may get suspicious is if you go over 10GB or more.
Otherwise you are just classified as a heavy user (which is like what they stated to be about 2% of users on their network). MyWi away and AT&T can go fick themselves. We payed for full unlimited $30 a month data use and I'm gonna use it.

I'm already hitting 2.8GB usage in 19 days so far on my iPhone 4. Most of it is due to heavy HQ Youtube videos.

 

[jdong]

They cannot detect anything. The only way they can detect anything out of the ordinary is if your device connects to certain services using specific ports and/or host names. They would have to filter out each and every host you hit on your dynamic ip. This isn't gonna happen.

Surely you've heard of a TTL field before, right? NAT detection is nothing new....

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/NAT_detection
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml
http://www.sflow.org/detectNAT/
http://blog.tenablesecurity.com/2008/03/reverse-nat-det.html


Does AT&T do anything like this? I have no clue. I don't work for them. But I have implemented NAT detection before to enforce internal network policies and it's more reliable and easier to do than you may think....

So just magically assuming that it's not possible is not such a great idea.

 

[ClutchThese]

I'm pretty sure it would be illegal for them to do that. for them to know how you are doing the tether, they would basically have to do a tap on your data and capture your stuff....without a warrant...i think that's a bit illegal.

 

[NoStopN]

So how could they prove you tethered?

I would imagine using MiWi would make their attempt at proving it more difficult. Hell, if you're honest, you turn on the tethering option on your "My AT&T" app. Otherwise, you'd still have to turn on the tethering option of the iPhone. There may be some software that alerts AT&T that you've switched that function on. Damn, sometimes it might be interesting to work for AT&T just to know how this stuff works.

We payed for full unlimited $30 a month data use and I'm gonna use it.

This is my feeling about it. If they gave you the option (or forced it upon you), by all means get your money's worth.

 

[iPadThai]

Surely you've heard of a TTL field before, right? NAT detection is nothing new....

http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/NAT_detection
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml
http://www.sflow.org/detectNAT/
http://blog.tenablesecurity.com/2008/03/reverse-nat-det.html


Does AT&T do anything like this? I have no clue. I don't work for them. But I have implemented NAT detection before to enforce internal network policies and it's more reliable and easier to do than you may think....

So just magically assuming that it's not possible is not such a great idea.

You're going overboard with this. They will not do anything because there's nothing to enforce. Time after time, many users have gone past 5GB and still nothing from AT&T about it.

It's not like the latency is good enough for internet gaming, good enough for torrent downloads. It's actually good enough for youtube in HQ. That's where the majority of data bandwidth is spent.