AT&T Tethering Police Crack Down on iPhone Users

Android is still safe for now. Makes you wonder if Apple gave AT&T a way to tell.

 

I agree with most of the users that have commented on the site.

 

What gives you that idea? Tethered traffic is pretty easy to spot, no matter what kind of phone it is. The trick is not to get noticed. If you consistently use 1 gig a month on your phone, and all of the sudden it spikes up to 5 or 6 gigs, they look you over to see what kind of traffic you've been pulling in. This has been the policy on the dumb phones with "MediaNet" accounts for the last ten years. I might tether mine one or two days a month, at most, and only when my Virgin Mobile card is not picking up a Sprint signal, which is usually along I 20 in Louisiana and Mississippi. I don't do it enough to get noticed. Maybe a couple hundred megabytes. If you use it as a primary connection, I'm going to get a similar letter.

 

Been keeping up with this on Engaget. The fact that Android is open source might make it harder to tell, especially if people are using custom ROMs.

The data usage has nothing to do with it because some have been tethering for over a year. Their usage would be consistent. Apple has had a long relationship with AT&T, and recently put out an update to the iPhone for their customers.

 

Given that there have been reports of users that don't tether getting this e-mail and text message from AT&T, it appears as if they are just sending out the message to people that have very high usage and *might* be tethering.

 

That is messed up if that's the case.