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AT&T Cracking Down On Unofficial iPhone Tethering
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T is sending warning notifications to jailbroken iPhone users who use unofficial tethering methods like MyWi and PDANet. 'Customers are being notified that their service plans need updating to subscribe to a tethering plan, and that they will be automatically subscribed to a DataPro 4GB package that costs an additional $45 per month if they continue to tether.'"
Do Americans know that no one else in the world does this? Not in Europe, not in Asia. They sell you the service and you use it how you want.
But this is Apple's fault too. If you go with Windows phones you can tether how you want, as they only care about iPhone users and can't detect Windows traffic from other Windows traffic.
How do they detect if the users are tethering??
Pay up or we force you to pay.
Oh, and yeah, our service isn't really top notch. But if you try to go to someone else, we'll break your legs (well, charge you a fee anyway).
How do Americans put up with this crap, when other countries pay so, so much less for mobile?
These type of claims by wireless companies are SERIOUSLY wrong.
It's the exact same thing as if your ISP tried to charge you for using connection sharing in Windows. It's part of an O.S. you already purchased. It's taking advantage of ignorance.
Charge them for how much data they use, not for how they use it. AT&T is just assuming that anybody tethering is using more bandwidth than they would otherwise. The real problem is that they hooked subscribers with a promise of "unlimited data" in the first place.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm past my contract terms with them and sick of them, to boot! If they do this to me, then I'll tell them to take their plan and shove it.
It's like when your ISP charges you more to use a desktop than a notebook or tablet. Oh wait, no they don't. That would be crazy.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
...a Class Action.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How is this even allowed? I pay for 2GB of data per month. Whether the traffic goes to my iPhone or to my iPhone and then to my iPad isn't really any of AT&T's concern. There is no extra overhead, no extra work on their side. All the routing is done on the phone itself. This sounds like a double charge on a single service. Am I missing something?
I use my Nexus One as a tether and WiFi hotspot. Not sure if AT&T can detect that, but I haven't heard anything from them yet.
Isn't it against regulation to force you into an added-charge service unless you opt out?
As long as the customers pay for the services I don't see any problem with tethering (whatever medium they sue). ...
It could be an EULA issue. But then it'd be an issue between Apple and the users
What's the problem, in the end?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
so, this is why we need net neutrality, so that ISPs don't charge based on content type (iPhone data vs. tethered data).
heh, when i ran 100+ connections and d/l 12G of torrents in 2 days on my wife's non-jailbroke android phone, which we tethered when a drunk driver took out our internet for 12 days, all we got was a warning after 10-12G that we'd be reduced to dialup speeds. Which, considering I had no dial tone (also due to drunk driver who smashed telephone pole[3rd time]), was better than the alternative, and apparently better than if we'd done this with my jailbroken iPhone (which I got for free, and would never buy, but also would not just throw in the trash).
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Being new to Android I wonder if they would be able to tell if we were tethering. Looking at a couple of videos on how this is done, I don't see any additional apps that need to be installed.
Dear American entrepreneurs,
These data "plans" are absurd. Please start a few competing wireless data service companies that actually charge a fair price: pay for what you use. None of these 'unlimited' data lies, none of this "pay for each device that connects" crap, no throttling traffic types you deem 'less important', just let us pay for the bandwidth we use. Bonus points if you charge less during non-peak hours. Sure, studies have "shown" this is not an optimal business plan. But honestly, screwing customers is not a good business plan; if you screw your customers just a little less, you should be able to beat the competition.
It sounds more like AT&T is targeting users who are using too much data. It seems to me that if you are staying within reasonable data limits and not using up crazy bandwidth you should be fine.
... but how do they know if a phone is being tethered?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You could argue for this being a reasonable restriction for unlimited plans, but for limited plans it makes no more sense then a utility charging differently depending on how I use water or electricity.
If you have an I-phone guess what? You signed a contract with AT&T. You agreed that you would not tether without a tether plan. If you bought an I-phone you agreed not to jailbreak it or fuck with it in ways that are prohibited by Apple. If you do not agree to these ideas then stop supporting these companies. It is as simple as that. I do question the legality of forcing the 4 GB tether plan, but good luck to anyone who tries to fight it in court. "Well you see judge, I was violating my contract with AT&T, because I did not want to pay for tethering and they charged me for tethering anyway even though I did not sign up for it. Guess the moral of the story is to be honest and not try and cheat the system. If you disagree with the system, then work to change it.
If you would like to continue tethering...here are details on the plan:
-DataPro 4GB for Smartphone Tethering
--$45 per month (this gives you 4GB in total, combining both your smartphone data plan for $25 and the tethering feature, $20)
This is real simple people. Cancel your service with AT&T. They are seeing a MASS defection right now.
I did it 3 weeks ago and went with Verizon. Could not be happier. Verizon even matched my unlimited data plan from AT&T.
You know, there was a certain tipping point, and I'm not entirely sure when that was, when congress and others in government was forced into taking action against "telecom." In the past, did you know you were not allowed to use any phone other than one provided by your carrier? And you could not own your own phone! The cost for the use of the phone or phones was "abusive" to say the least. And for each phone jack you had in your house, there was a chance you might get billed for it. Eventually, government did step in and make it all better.
But here we are again. We're talking about wireless versus wired, but we are still talking about an area where the government is providing the right-of-way for radio signaling equipment which enables these telecoms to progressively and continuously abuse the consumer. You can own your own phone, it's true, but as an example, if I want to use my android phone, I have to pay for the data plan to go with it. So, I pay a higher rate, regardless of what I actually do with it, because I have a better device. (And to be frank, I would be perfectly happy with my phone if my data over 3G were severely limited... I use WiFi where possible already.) The way I see it, we are suffering exactly the same abuses that we did decades ago... abuses which led to government intervention. So how far does it have to go before we get some backing here?
Once again, an Apple related story brings out the Slashdot retardation like no other.
Keep it up fellas! You really bring the laughs. It's even better knowing you're really like this! It's not an act! Killer!
except I use a desktop user agent on my android browser...
My wife has an iPhone and the one option I don't feel comfortable with jailbreaking it. Instead I would like to see an on-the-fly tethering option. Something like $20 and you can tether for 30 days or so. She goes out of town once or twice a year to her mother's. Her mother does not have internet access. I don't want to pay a recurring $20 charge and loose her unlimited plan just so she can use her laptop for 10 days a year. I wonder if any of the users who jailbroke their phone did it just for this type occasional use? More options means more people will follow the rules.
My wife used her upgrade discount to surprise me with an iPhone4 on my birthday. I started using it and within 2 weeks ATT sent me an email stating that they had "upgraded" my account from my Unlimited data plan to their 2GB iPhone data plan and my bill went up by $15/mo. I'd cancel but I'm still on a contract and would get shafted with a termination fee... called att and complained but it was a waste of time, they've got me on the hook and they know it. F-U AT&T!!!
Tethering like that is probably against the ToS in the contract, and you should be able to go free without an early cancelation fee.
The answer to all of the above hysterical "what if" questions is simply you pay the early termination fee - which is the difference in price between the subsidized and retail price of the phone.
Say I have finished the contract. Or say I bring my own phone instead of taking a subsidized phone in the first place. Then why don't I get a discount of (ETF / length of contract) off Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T monthly service? At least T-Mobile is honest about its subsidies and offers such a discount (ask about "Even More Plus" in any T-Mobile store), but it also reportedly has the worst coverage among the big four.
T-Mobile offers the SIM-only "Even More Plus" plan, a cheaper plan designed for people who have bought a phone separately. Last time I checked, the discount was 10 USD off voice or 20 USD off voice and data. So do I understand correctly that you can't get T-Mobile where you live?
Isn't "datapro" and "4GB" an oxymoron?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Vodaphone does it for iPhone users in India too. :)
If you have a smarphone, and want a 2.5GB GPRS (EDGE 2G) plan? Price = 199/month (4$ approx)
If you have an iPhone?
You need to buy iPhone GPRS plan which costs 450rs for 500MB/mo
So its like the carriers saying "We know you iPhone uses are dumbos who will pay extra for nothing.... so we will take your money, thank you!"
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I'm out of contract and I sometimes tether. If I get a letter like this, the only way AT&T will hear from me is when T-Mobile contacts them to transfer my number to the T-Mobile service.
me too.. hate getting those silly "mobile" versions of sites when I have a perfectly capable browser.
never tether as i have a free VZ aircard thing from work, so if they try to claim i've tethered b/c of user agent i will be pissed.
Fuck off! Thank God for having a choice of wireless services in America! I'd love to see just where in the terms and services AT&T can just unilaterally make that change. I am willing to bet, this will constitute a change in the contract. As we all know, a change in the contract means it is effectively broken by AT&T and you would not have to pay an Early Termination Fee.
Doesn't that sound like ED-209?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You could use the internet on your, you know, computer.
Probably not - most likely this is just using NAT or whatever which isn't easily detected.
Ha! I wrote a paper on NAT detection and NAT client-counting in grad school. It's really easy.
1) Looks for IP packets with weird TTLs. If any packet originating from a "normal" phone has a TTL of 128 or 64 or whatever, and you see a bunch of packets hitting your gateway with 127 or 63 TTL values, that means there's a network device (your phone's NAT software) between the packet-originator (computer that's tethered) and the network. It's *especially* glaring if you have a mix of TTL values, like 63 & 127, which means there are probably multiple machines behind the NAT (I think Linux/UNIX IP stack uses 128, and Windows uses 64, or maybe the reverse. But they're different).
2) IP packets have a header field called "IP ID" that is optional and the OS can do pretty much whatever it wants with it, *and* most NAT routers leave the field untouched (don't rewrite it). A lot of OSes use is as a universal packet-counter (every time a packet goes out, it increments the field by one), or some OSes increment the field every time a new source port is used to send a packet (which makes it much harder to count clients). If you see a pattern like this in the IP ID field of packets inbound to your network:
465,466,467,128,129,468,130,131,469,470,471,132
it's pretty obvious there are 2 computers talking through the NAT, one numbering 465-471, the other 128-132.
So yeah, it can be done, REALLY easily. Of course, you could easily write a stealth NAT routing algorithm that replaces all TTL values with 128 or 64, or re-writes the IP ID field to make it look like one machine, but as far as I know normal commercial products don't do that. Maybe the PDANet authors were smart enough to do that. But the things I outlined let you do it without deep packet inspection, you can just check the headers.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u055738wk18835l0/
Posting anon so you can't link my real identity (Kenneth Straka) to my Slashdot ID. :)
Fight the automatic opt-in for this fee and AT&T will say "Hey, you're violating the terms of our contract by tethering without authorization and we are now terminating our agreement.
By the way, here is your $300 early termination fee."
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Just a question: Have any of you ever actually done the math between a regular, subsidized phone and a plan, and buying a phone outright?
Yes. For any major U.S. cellular carrier that isn't T-Mobile, buying the phone outright is far more expensive because Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T offer no plan with a discount for bringing your own phone. I talked to an AT&T sales representative a few weeks ago while helping my aunt pick out a phone for her son, and he sounded surprised that T-Mobile would even offer Even More Plus. As for T-Mobile, that isn't an option for a lot of people who have posted comments to this and other Slashdot stories. I take it they would have already switched to T-Mobile if it weren't for the lack of coverage.
I'd really like to know if any US carriers allow tethering without ridiculous additional fees. I use very little data, but occasionally need to use my laptop for a task (usually connecting somewhere via ssh) that would be inconvenient on an iphone, and since I "upgraded" to 4.x I can't tether anymore. It's kind of ironic that I probably use less than 1/2GB data per month, but because I want to use it in a way that's convenient for me they want to charge me double for no additional work on their end.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I mean, it's already illegal to listen to a song or watch a movie without paying. Why not make free tethering illegal as well? In fact, make everything that big corporations don't like a felony.
The fact that you don't like the selection doesn't mean that you have the right to break the contract.
If you want tethering, but don't want to pay what the contract says, the only ethical thing to do is *not tether*.
You're the ones who bought the DRM infested piece of iShit.
Why would anyone pay extra for something that's just a usual function of a mobile phone? It's like trying to charge more for a call when using a headset instead of holding the phone to your head. Absurd and ridiculous!
The Telekom in Germany also tried it for a while, but I guess not enough people were stupid enough to step into that trap.
If they were competing, they'd be trying to gain market share at the expense of the other players.
Not necessarily true. It's easy to show situations where gains in market share result in losses of profits. Happens with the car companies all the time. The fiduciary duty of company is to maximize profits for the shareholders, not market share. You can gain huge amounts of market share by selling $2 for $1 but you'll be hugely unprofitable doing so.
The folks running the big telecoms are engaging in some game theory. They have little to gain from a price war and they all know it so they tacitly signal (read collude) their strategies to maintain prices at levels you'd expect from an oligopoly. They have little to fear from new market entrants and they've been playing this game with each other for quite some time. As a result prices tend to remain artificially high despite the fact that cell phone minutes are pretty much the definition of a commodity.
There really is no other rational explanation for the fact that text messaging, which costs them basically nothing, remains ridiculously expensive. These companies are purposely not competing in order to maximize profits. It may not be collusion in the smoke filled back room sense but the effect is basically the same.
If I am paying AT&T $25/month for 2Gig Data, isn't it should up to me me..How I used the data allowance....If i want to use all 2 Gig data allowance in a day, week or a month with tethering or without tethering?
What next you can't go to Google site you can only go to Yahoo? That's why i don't have AT&T crap!
-AJ
No. We just are at the mercy of virtual monopolies.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How is it that they are legally allowed to do this? Tethering does not magically allow you to use more data than your plan allows, and it doesn't use more network resources other than the bandwidth you've already paid for. What is the justification for the tethering cost?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I agree with you that we should be able to do what we want with our bandwidth. But they can detect traffic without looking for "Windows traffic".
Every time a packet goes from one hop to the next, the TTL field gets decremented. If traffic originates from the iPhone, it has a TTL of 64. If you tether some other device (even another iPhone, connected to the first via wi-fi), it will have a different TTL.
WiFi tethering and good speeds with my MyTouch 4G (1-4 Mb/s down, a bit less up, in most places). All you can eat data for $30/month.
I'm wondering how AT&T is going to justify how they know you're tethering in the first place? They can base it solely on amount of data consumed...but that's in no way accurate. Are they going to admit that they're monitoring your data stream without your permission or notification? Ouch...that's gonna get ugly. Are they going to admit they've backdoor'd your phone to see what apps you're running...double ouch.
I don't see any way for AT&T to definitively identify people who are tethering without a fairly egregious privacy violation.
No one ever lost money betting on the stupidity of americans.
What I don't get is what is the real difference between data used by my phone when, say, streaming some video from YouTube, or data that's being used by my phone to provide net access to my laptop? Assuming the phone company simply bills for the data, or has a plan with some sort of cap, as is normal here in Australia anyway, surely they'd want to encourage more use of that data so as to increase their billing? I really don't understand why tethering isn't just another always-available function of the phone, rather than something you are expected to arrange specially with your phone company.
Here my iPhone and iPad are both on Telstra but I can only tether with my phone, but not my iPad. It's just annoying, and I can't see it's any of Telstra's business what I do with my data, so long as I pay my bill and am not breaking the law.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
The contacts legally includes tethering tax. However, the weak point is false positives -- users wrongly charged for tethering.
A certain user is suspected for tethering due to an unusual network usage pattern. AT&T charges him for extra $45 for tethering. Since he did not use tethering, they cannot charge him the extra tethering tax. He takes AT&T to the court, and AT&T fails to prove he was tethering. One successful class action is all that is needed to put an end to tethering tax.
T-mobile has that; it only cost me like $10 for a sim and some credit off their website, stuck it in my N900
Thanks for the recommendation. I seem to remember wanting to try T-Mobile prepaid before, but I realized I'd need a phone to use it with. Where can I try an N900 or any other factory-unlocked phone before buying it? I checked in Best Buy, RadioShack, and a T-Mobile store in Fort Wayne, Indiana, some time ago, and none carried it. Or from which web store do you recommend that I buy one that doesn't have a prohibitive restocking fee should I find it unusable? And what do you recommend for people living outside T-Mobile's coverage?
I know everyone's having a jolly good time bashing how stupid Americans are for the weaknesses in their phone plan options, but what about the strengths of what AT+T offers? I will focus on non-data users, where the US offerings are particularly appealing. First of all, it can be really cheap. If you get a few friends on a "family plan" with AT+T, you can basically get unlimited voice calling for a family of four for like $20 per person per month, including free phones for all. Talk to anyone anywhere in the US, any time of day, as much as you like, and don't pay more than $20. Ok now, I'm stretching the truth a little, because the minutes are not actually unlimited, however if your family consists of normal/typical Americans, it's very unlikely that they would all talk enough to use up the minutes that come with the plan. I talked for hours nearly every day, as did my brother, and we never hit the limit. Also, mobile-to-mobile AT+T minutes don't count against your balance, which would typically include a lot of people who you would be calling anyways.
I've traveled through a LOT of countries in the past couple of years, and for someone who actually likes to TALK on the phone, few places beat the USA pricewise. Many countries, like Australia or Japan, do not offer many "talking" minutes. Prepaid 3G internet via USB stick was surprisingly cheap in NZ and Australia, but voice calls were not. The locals told me they usually only SMS each other since they can't make many calls without paying loads. Japan is similar with messages being used because calls are prohibitively expensive. In Los Angeles, people talk for hours every day while sitting in traffic just to entertain themselves, and they don't have to pay much for it. When I returned to LA from my travels, I added myself to my family's plan for only $15 extra a month, and did not get locked into a contract. $15 a month for virtually unlimited calling and no contract, using my a phone I already owned (a free phone from AT+T would have required a contract). Even without a family plan to mooch off of, prices for plans with massive amounts of talking minutes but additional fees for data or texts are still quite cheap. If you can call instead of text, good luck finding service with that many talking minutes at that price in many other countries.
Almost every country screws you in one way or another on your cell phone communications. In the US, it's tethering fees, expensive data plans, trying to lock you into contracts, and outrageous per-msg fees for sending or receiving(!) texts unless you also pay an outrageous additional $15 per month for unlimited texts. In many countries it's expensive talk times that prohibit your ability to have long unimportant conversations with your friends. At least there's Skype for jailbroken data users :) My cell phone and plan options here in Japan super-suck and I really wish I were getting a US type of plan. On the bright side, having email in your cell phones without a data plan is quite nice though.
One last point of interest. Those "free phones" from AT+T in the US can actually make money for you! I know a guy who would unlock/jailbreak his free iPhone from AT+T, then as soon as he's eligible to upgrade to a new model (for free or heavily discounted) and renew his contract with AT+T, he would sell the unlocked/jailbroken phone on Ebay for a lot of money. Repeating this every year or however often they offer it ends up getting him an awful lot of money back on what he's paying them.
I think all of the suggestions so far are very good, but I doubt AT$T (the $ is on purpose) is going that far. Most likely, IMO, is that anything over, say 4-6gb, and AT&T will just assume tethering is going on, simply based on usage. At that point, they send the notice out to requiring a switch to a tethering plan. Now we are left with just a few responses:
1) customer is tethering and thinks they are caught (surely AT&T can see they are tethering), so they switch to a tethering plan in order to keep using the feature which said customer has grown accustomed to using. RESULT: AT&T increases profit
2)customer is not tethering, has no idea what tethering means, but changes plan in order to keep using their precious iPhone. RESULT: AT&T increases profit dramatically
3)customer is tethering, but doesn't want to pay $45 fee so they stop tethering or at least limit their usage below 4gb. RESULT: AT&T frees up bandwidth on their already strained network
4)customer, tethering or not, calls AT&T and denies tethering to avoid paying $45 fee. At this point either AT&T can produce the "goods" (evidence) or they can't. RESULT: mixed
Having worked many years in the wireless industry, including but not limited to AT&T, I can promise most responses are going to be either 1 or 2. Customers rarely understand the technology behind the features, even the features they use; they just know it works or it doesn't work, and that is the scope of their understanding. Both 1 and 2 are going to increase the profit for AT&T, which is the whole point of this exercise. Far fewer responses are going to be 3, but this will still help AT&T by reducing the usage of their network (this is still a big WIN for AT&T). 4 is going to be the least likely response, and probably includes the few users that are tech say enough to understand how the feature works. Based on their interaction with the inbound call rep, they will either pay up or not. But this is such a small percentage, it is negligible to AT&T, therefore AT&T doesn't really care. AT&T has already accomplished their goal of maximizing profit with responses 1 and 2.
I think this is the most likely scenario based on how the whole issue is being handled. If AT&T really could tell with any certainty when an iPhone was being tethered, I believe the plan would automatically switch as soon as the first tethered connection was made. Since this notice is only sent after an approximately 4gb threshold is reached (even then it is still a notice that is sent first, not an automatic switch; this is for response 3) I doubt they can tell with any amount of certainty. Also, being able to detect tethering, even on jailbreaks, would require AT&T to add (or activate) some sort of software or hardware upgrade/technology to their own network backbone, which would cost money. Even just implementing an already existing GSM feature would cost something. These telco's are all about maximizing profit; keyword being MAXIMIZE, ie making the MOST INCOME while having the LEAST EXPENSES. My scenario would accomplish just this.
Please note this is only IMHO (I'm 99% sure this is what is going on) and not based on any inside knowledge or information other than knowing how these companies work and my observation skills, so please do not shoot the messenger....
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