AT&T out to get us! Hunting hotspot users for $$$.

[fasst27]

Gizmodo: At&t tells jailbroken iphone tetherers to pay up

While I know that the hotspot connectivity is an extra fee in AT&T's opinion, I do not subscribe to this idea. I pay for data and I should be able to use it as I wish whether it is on my phone, ipad or computer. Anyways, debates aside, how visible is my hotspot usage to AT&T? Are our Nexus Ones ratting us out?

I don't hotspot much, nor do I consume much, but it was a major feature for why I spent $500 on my Nexus One. Any thoughts?

 

[ls377]

Some people think they're using iOS version data to determine who is tethering, so we may be safe. I haven't seen any Android people getting this notice, which is good news.

I also haven't seen anyone on the tiered data get it, so I might be doubly safe

 

[font1975]

I suppose if they look at the HTTP headers, they could see you're using a desktop browser. Although that's not reliable as some mobile browsers like Dolphin let you customize that header field.

 

[ls377]

I suppose if they look at the HTTP headers, they could see you're using a desktop browser. Although that's not reliable as some mobile browsers like Dolphin let you customize that header field.

Seems like it would take a lot to go through all the data and look for that. Maybe they look for people they think might be tethering.

 

[font1975]

Seems like it would take a lot to go through all the data and look for that. Maybe they look for people they think might be tethering.

Not as difficult as you might think. They already see every HTTP packet, and a script to flag HTTP headers from the logs of the traffic wouldn't be too hard from there...

As I said though, that wouldn't be a reliable method; at least not by itself....

Another method would be to simply look at the number of connections coming from a device. You figure a single smartphone shouldn't have on average more than a dozen or so active connections to the Internet. But if you start seeing hundreds, you can bet there's more than one host behind that single IP address assigned to a smartphone. And if the connection ports are all over the place, you can probably assume somethings using a P2P protocl of some sort (e.g. bit torrent). [Yes, torrent traffic stands out like a sore thumb, even if the amount of data is low.]

There are a number of ways to analyze the traffic. And most if not all can be automated. Really, it just depends how actively ATT wants to pursue this.

Given that it appears to only be iPhone users receiving this message, though, I'm in agreement with you. I'm betting that the iPhone data packets are being tagged by the OS itself. That alone makes it easy to spot, and easier to prove what the user is up to...

 

[ls377]

Not as difficult as you might think. They already see every HTTP packet, and a script to flag HTTP headers from the logs of the traffic wouldn't be too hard from there...

As I said though, that wouldn't be a reliable method; at least not by itself....

Another method would be to simply look at the number of connections coming from a device. You figure a single smartphone shouldn't have on average more than a dozen or so active connections to the Internet. But if you start seeing hundreds, you can bet there's more than one host behind that single IP address assigned to a smartphone. And if the connection ports are all over the place, you can probably assume somethings using a P2P protocl of some sort (e.g. bit torrent). [Yes, torrent traffic stands out like a sore thumb, even if the amount of data is low.]

There are a number of ways to analyze the traffic. And most if not all can be automated. Really, it just depends how actively ATT wants to pursue this.

Given that it appears to only be iPhone users receiving this message, though, I'm in agreement with you. I'm betting that the iPhone data packets are being tagged by the OS itself. That alone makes it easy to spot, and easier to prove what the user is up to...

It doesn't seem like they're pushing it that much, because I don't think people on tiered plans have been getting the message. I bet they're trying to push high users off of unlimited.

 

[GeoKaplan]

Seems like it would take a lot to go through all the data and look for that. Maybe they look for people they think might be tethering.

I don't think it is terribly complicated: If they find a customer who is using burning through gigabytes of data per month, they can review that customer's usage in detail and determine whether it was from the phone itself or from an external device.

If the tethering customer is using less than 2 gb/mo, no problem.