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A Teenage Hacker Figured Out How To Get Free Data On His Phone (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Jacob Ajit is 17 and he just hacked his way to getting free phone data, presumably so that he can do whatever it is that teens do online these days without alerting his parents with overage fees. According to a Medium post Ajit posted on Wednesday, he made his discovery while playing around with a prepaid T-Mobile phone with no service. The phone was still able to connect to the network, although it would only take him to a T-Mobile portal asking him to renew the prepaid phone plan. For some reason, though, Ajit wrote that his internet speed test app still worked, albeit through a T-Mobile server. Ajit figured out that he was able to access media sent from any folder labelled "/speedtest," possibly because T-Mobile whitelists media files from speed tests regardless of the host. He tested his theory by setting up a "/speedtest" folder on his own site and filled it with media, including a Taylor Swift music video, which he was able to access. Ajit writes that he then created a proxy server that allows users to access any site with this method. All a T-Mobile user has to do is go to this page and input any URL they want to visit. "Just like that, I now had access to data throughout the T-Mobile network without maintaining any sort of formal payments or contract," Ajit wrote on Medium. "Just my phone's radios talking to the network's radios, free of any artificial shackles."
Where did you get that idea? For instance, here is an excerpt from NY law explaining when a person is guilty of theft of services
With intent to avoid payment by himself or another person of the lawful charge for any telephone service which is provided for a charge or compensation he (a) sells, offers for sale or otherwise makes available, without consent, an existing, canceled or revoked access device; or (b) uses, without consent, an existing, canceled or revoked access device; or (c) knowingly obtains any telecommunications service with fraudulent intent by use of an unauthorized, false, or fictitious name, identification, telephone number, or access device. For purposes of this subdivision access device means any telephone calling card number, credit card number, account number, mobile identification number, electronic serial number or personal identification number that can be used to obtain telephone service.
See anything in there about TOS?
Don't expect this to be fixed anytime soon. Ookla Speedtest has been exempt from data caps since 2014, and free speedtests are an official feature of T-Mobile data plans.
Confirmed: T-Mobile exempting speed-testing data from monthly data allotments
Speedtest servers are hosted by volunteers, and as can been seen from the installation instructions, Ookla Speedtest is fairly hard to exempt without exempting everything under /speedtest
Installing HTTP Legacy Fallback
Speedtest servers are located everywhere. T-Mobile could conceivably limit exemptions to only servers on the Speedtest.net server list, but the exemption list would require continual synchronization to keep it up to date.
Speedtest.net server list
The trouble is if the exemption list ever becomes out of date, then T-Mobile customers would complain bitterly about being charged for speedtests until the exemption list is updated, and presumably T-Mobile would prefer to avoid complaints about speedtests using data.
They're big on selling off hardware through Daily Steals, too, without telling the buyer that the service the hardware depends on is going to be shut off in just a few months. I have a WiFi router with cell data service from them through Sprint that lasted six months and then just stopped when Sprint turned off the data service.
A long time ago when dialup and AOL were viable options, you could use their free software they gave out to get an account with to get online. You'd run it and wait for it to connect to their server, but instead of filling it out and getting an account, you'd tab to your own browser without closing the AOL one, and you were on the internet without any restrictions.