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gigahurtz
Premium Member
join:2001-10-20
USA

gigahurtz to wilbarger

Premium Member

to wilbarger

Re: $50 for 2.5GB of Data?

I would be interested to know if personal hotspot works on the iPhone. It would be convenient for me with my wifi iPad when I travel.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72

Member

Tethering is strictly prohibited on all of the AT&T MVNO, including cricket. YMMV. At one point ST was cracking down on this, via AT&T. If you do it occasionally, maybe you get away with it, but be aware if they cut you off for ToS abuse, you could lose your phone #. Not sure how precious that is to you, but that was happening to lots of people when AT&T/ST were cracking down on tethering.

They are starting to offer hotspots for decent money, but obviously not as easy as tethering to a phone.

wilbarger
join:2001-06-06
Quinlan, TX

wilbarger

Member

Taking my own Google Edition S4 with NEVER having any ATT spyware on it has never caused me any problem with tethering. It is extremely unlikely they would ever take the time to sniff out the different IP.
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

Don't be so sure about that...

wilbarger
join:2001-06-06
Quinlan, TX

wilbarger

Member

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I have never had any problem except for the one time I was using an ATT phone that I had not wiped and installed a full AOSP ROM on.

So, you are saying you have been caught, or can site a case where a clean phone has been identified?
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

rradina

Member

My son is on T-Mobile and he rooted his phone to enable hot spot. Within minutes after enabling it, T-Mobile sent him a text message regarding a TOS violation. If T-Mobile can do it, AT&T can do it. Do they? I have no idea but my comment was "don't be so sure about that..."

Regarding packet inspection, all Internet access is proxied so they can cache popular sites and reduce backbone congestion. This is totally transparent but it does allow them to track what sites you visit. If your phone suddenly starts sending browser cookies that identify a desktop browser and sites don't redirect to their mobile versions, it's a dead giveaway a non-phone device is using their network.

If you make sure you only browse HTTPS or you use a VPN to a secure proxy, you might be safe but there used to be other ways to detect a Windows device. TCP conversations rely on packet sequence numbers. In the past it was possible to sniff packet sequence numbers and determine if the client was Unix or Windows simply because the two network stacks generated predictable sequence numbers.

In closing, if AT&T wants to catch folks tethering when their TOS doesn't allow it, they can probably do so unless you are extremely careful and keep your traffic encrypted.

Quite frankly I think it's ridiculous when you have a CAP that they care how you use it. In fact, if the FCC had any balls, it would be illegal to discriminate how one uses the bytes their plan provides. Perhaps one day it won't matter but today, apparently it does and clearly there are no consumer protections that make it illegal.