As title, possibly a retarded question but I'm not exactly the most clued up person when it comes to phones. I have a SIM only deal from Three which includes "all you can eat" data, but no tethering (I can pay an extra fiver/month for that). However, I can go into the options on my phone (if it matters, it's an iphone) and enable a personal hotspot. Then I can connect to that hotspot with whatever device and it magically gets internet. Does three somehow know that i'm sharing that data out to other devices (and can therefore bill me for it, no doubt at £bum-rape/mb) or as far as they are concerned, was I just using that data on the handset itself? TIA!
I don't know how they know but they do have systems in place to tell. So, you will be able to do the above, but you may find in a week or twos time you get a message saying that they've detected you using your phone as a hotspot and to continue using data on your phone you'll have to turn it off and on again.
I think that they watch your download rate, if you start streaming iplayer through your phone then I think that they severely cap you.
I couldn't get a personal hotspot to work on my o2 account, would only ever come up with acquiring address, so think your supplier might be able to work it out.
I use my data connection all the time tethered to my laptop, I did have an email from them saying that they suspected I was tethering mainly because I downloaded a lot of large work files while working in the field, but I cut down my usage to cover mainly emails, youtube, facebook and work related web services and haven't had any issues since. This was GiffGaff though.
They won't bill you, but it will magically stop working after a while. Did for Me. They monitor the packet headers which contain the device id. PS, I'm on a Three SIM only deal using an iPhone.
Cheers all. Haven't actually been using it but was mildly surprised to find that it worked when I tried. Will give it a miss, was just curious
With three they can't seem to determine between android phone and tablet when tethering so it will work and not get stopped, it is against Ts&Cs though and they have got hot on stopping it, I used to be able to tether anything on AYCE but I guess I did too much Netflix streaming one day and they stopped it, now any non android device on my phone bars my data connection with a warning page telling me to stop and reboot if I want data back. They will no doubt fix the Android loophole at some point. Strangely the missus' can tether anything but them she doesn't abuse it like me
doesn't seem to be a lot of info on how they detect it out there. main thing seems to be that they look for abnormal data usage a couple things came to me, which were the user agent on the headers > though I added a windows firefox user string at one point to get it to make websites work properly (mobile versions are generally beyond just crap) which had no impact for me (admittedly I have so little signal I use mainly wifi, so usage may have been under) the other thing I was thinking was deep packet inspection, so potentially use a VPN to try and defeat that. also use of alternate methods of tethering > one or two of the articles stated that tethering apps report themselves, but stuff like PDAnet doesn't and so the phone networks have asked google to keep it off the play store... dunno how true that is though
I've looked this up before and I think they do it by detecting your user agent. I suspect if you share with another mobile device e.g. a tablet, they would be none the wiser. If you're using a PC, you can try to change the user agent (I think some Chrome extensions can do that) or I think you can install various apps (need root access) to prevent 3 from monitoring. Er... Obviously if you give internet to your whole house, they will be suspicious no matter what you do.
If you have unrestricted access to people's usage I doubt it would be too hard to find a few tell tale signs that people are tethering and flag them up automatically, even if it's just a case of analysing the patterns of usage.
I used to work for an internet mediation company, This is largely accurate, but the user agent in the packet header isn't a perfect way of identifying it, particularly as mobile browsers have 'desktop' mode. Its worse with android devices. Though coming to think of it the extended period it takes to work out if you're doing might be when its establishing if you are tethering by building a profile, or how often it detects windows update, or other such identifying applications. Our key problem was identifying what traffic to block, we tried javascript injection to identify resolution, size, or other key factors, but it slowed traffic down a lot, and it was easy to get around.
I would have a read of : http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/379738/can-the-network-tell-if-you-tether-your-pc-to-your-phone very enlightening
On O2 it depends what you tether to the phone... I have my android tablet tethered to my iPhone for weeks at a time when I'm in London for Conferences or Training and O2 haven't said anything. I had my macbook tethered when I moved house as broadband install was delayed and O2 called me up after two days and told me to stop or upgrade my contract to allow it.
I have all you can eat data on 3 and I tether quite a bit with it, and I don't pay additional for tethering. sometimes if my internet at home breaks (virgin) and I tether alot, I get message saying I've tethered alot and I need to stop doing that or I'll be in trouble, I haven't however ever noticed any additional costs on my bill from tethering.
If the question is whether a carrier can determine if data usage was on a tethered device (personal hotspot) or on the phone itself, the answer is yes and Yoda hit the nail on the head: Unfortunately it's true that they will stop your data at some point if you keep using it tethered. This will happen even faster because you're on an all you can eat plan with a FuP in place - they monitor those even more closely than monthly capped data usage plans.
I have the one plan on 3 and they allow tethering so I was told by one of their staff although I don't do it often as I have a portable hot spot device on 3 anyway
What Android browser has a desktop mode? I haven't found one that works without rooting it and messing in deep settings. Some webpages simply don't work right in the "mobile" version and then I'd prefer the desktop-version.
get firefox mobile (useful as it allows you to still use flash) then go "about:config" search "useragent". then insert one of your choosing, and enable override. I used the string "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0" side effect is it seems to make a lot of websites load quicker
