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How can phone companies detect tethering?
- tomohawk 7y agoAfter several years of good service, I was accused by my telco (Cricket) of tethering without paying the special fee and my phone was disabled. Found this out in the middle of a trip. The thing is, my plan did not require the extra fee when I signed up, and so that had been grandfathered in. When the telco does this, you can switch to another one, but you cannot port your number. This would be like the postal service owning your street address. If they took a dislike to you, they could prevent you from using the address!
- brink 7y agoIsn't paying for tethering the digital version of buying apples, but I have to pay a premium if I want to use them in a recipe?
- gok 7y agoIt's more like having a different price for a buffet if you're eating in vs. taking it home. The phone data rates are set with an understanding that phones use less data than laptops.
- ringshall 7y agoI get what you are saying, but that analogy fails as well. There is a physical limit to how much one person can eat, while there is no limit to how much someone might take home. Whereas with data, there is no limit intrinsic to tethering vs in-phone. More to the point, in practice, people can easily use as much data in-phone as on a laptop, due to streaming video. Think, for example, of someone streaming music via YouTube for hours on end.
- OJFord 7y agoThere's the same limit on possible data usage as there as on possible food haulage: throughput.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoTethering automatically subjects you to exactly the same throughput limit the phone already had; the phone needs to personally make each request.
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's a usage pattern thing, not a physical capability thing. It's why I like Google Fi. I don't have any of these arguments. I'm just fully metered and there aren't any restrictions.
- i_am_proteus 7y agoIf you set up a hotspot so your friends can all (anti-socially) stream separate videos, that scales up beyond what one user would consume.
- Domenic_S 7y agoBut you can never exceed the throughput of the phone.
- gok 7y ago> More to the point, in practice, people can easily use as much data in-phone as on a laptop, due to streaming video. Think, for example, of someone streaming music via YouTube for hours on end. There are actually several tricks to make video streaming efficient for phones. The top sites are aggressively throttled [1]. This is harder to do for laptops, where users are typically connecting to corporate VPNs and stuff. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/youtube-and-netflix-throttled-by-carriers-research-finds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/youtube-a...
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI agree with you overall, but not this reasoning. Smartphones can connect to VPN's as well.
- darkpuma 7y agoThey can, but is it as common in practice? (I earnestly don't know.)
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoEvery VPN provider I'm aware of offers either a mobile app or set up instructions for Android and iOS. So while that doesn't really answer your question, I suspect there's a non-insignificant number of mobile VPN users.
- bradknowles 7y agoSure. And anyone who uses a VPN can get themselves limited, just like they were using a laptop, because the carrier thinks you're trying to hide something from them.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoHave you ever heard of on-phone VPN use being detected as tethering? I'd expect the victims of this to be quite upset!
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoDoes it matter whether the limit is physical or practical? On average, people use much less data when it's confined to a single phone than when they can share it with laptops. Here's a different analogy that might work better: I can shop at Costco as much as I want, and I can even buy things for other people, but I cannot literally give my Costco card to someone else and let them shop at the store on their own.
- Retric 7y agoNot when they are also charging you by the bit transferred. People also deal with various data caps when tethering, they just now also deal with an extra bill for a service provided by their phone not the phone company.
- tinus_hn 7y agoMuch more people are going to transfer a lot of data using a computer than using a phone. An hour of YouTube on a phone is only about a gigabyte, think of how quickly you download that on a laptop.
- em-bee 7y agoit's a reminder of the old days where ISPs limited your connection to one device and required to pay multiple times if you had more than one device at home. people got wise to it and found that by using a router they could hide multiple devices and the practice eventually stopped. it was based on the same argument that multiple devices would be used by multiple people and hence create more traffic. i don't know if this was common in the US, but it certainly was in some countries in europe.
- Spooky23 7y agoIt's a service offering issue for unlimited plans, and a customer experience issue for metered. Tethering is problematic in many ways with devices that don't expect to be metered. A Windows PC or Mac will sop up data sitting idle at a prodigious rate. For every informed consumer who understands that, there are 8 who are going to go crazy when they end up with a wacky bill.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JadeNB 7y ago> A Windows PC or Mac will sop up data sitting idle at a prodigious rate. Thankfully, Windows finally offers a "This is a metered connection" option. Do you know how to get the equivalent functionality on a Mac? I've looked, but can't figure it out.
- scarejunba 7y agoAFAIK it doesn't exist and is part of the reason we don't have a MacBook with built-in LTE (can't stand dongles myself).
- fitzroy 7y agoThere’s an app called TripMode that does this. https://www.tripmode.ch/ https://www.tripmode.ch/ The fine-grained control is nice but still seems like a glaring omission that the Mac still isn’t “tethering-aware” with regard to conserving data — especially since it’s so seamless to connect to an iPhone that shares the same iCloud account.
- vjust 7y agoNot sure if this works as an analogy. Its like if you subscribe to netflix .. but if you want to share it with 4 family members, then get a family plan. You can simultaneously consume multiple streams of content. Tethering allows you to share the internet connection with other people, as well as your other devices - which is essentially you consuming multiple streams of internet data simultaneously.
- akersten 7y agoIt's all still limited by the throughout of the phone though. You could just as well open 4 streaming apps on the phone and pull the same data. To me, metering a "tethered" connection differently than the phone making the same requests is just as disgusting as an ISP charging you because you have a different number of computers connected to the internet on your residential connection. Or charging you more because you went to a streaming site. It's a blatant violation of net neutrality. If a cell phone company can't fulfill their advertised service of x mbit down / y mbit up, they shouldn't be offering it. Anything else is false advertising.
- salamander014 7y agoThis is a better analogy, but still not quite right. This issue constantly comes up with keeping the internet free and open. Take the following: The customer pays for their connection, say 10mbps over Verizon's network. Under a free and open internet, the customer is allowed to use that 10mbps that they PAID for in whatever damn way they please. Why should I be subject to Verizon's idea of what my connection should be used for? Congestion happens, but a properly designed network means that the pipes are mostly free and available under normal circumstances to all customers for all the bandwidth they paid for. Doesn't matter how many devices I use on the other side of that connection, I bought 10mbps and I should be able to use that 10mbps the way I want. This is price gouging. Plain and simple.
- southerntofu 7y ago> The customer pays for their connection, say 10mbps over Verizon's network. That's typically not what happens with commercial ISPs. You pay for access to some parts of the Internet with asymmetrical speeds (often 20Mbit to 1) and most times without even a publicly routable IP address ("for your security"). Even if you pay that commercial ISP for higher speeds, you can read in the contract that they're actually not guaranteed and that anyway people exceeding "reasonable limits" (usually not defined with actual numbers) will have access shut off. So sure you can do that on a non-profit and/or professional ISP because those will be explicit in what service is brought to you for what prices (without surprises) and they will usually stay out of your way when it comes to how you use the network (public IP, no port blocking, no priority for Youtube traffic over important mail, etc). So if you find this situation as revolting as i do, welcome to the fight against the telecoms industry! We can do better, cheaper, and more intimate Internet.
- mikestew 7y agoPaying for tethering is the digital equivalent of Shell or BP saying, "unlimited diesel for your compact car for $X/month. Add your 4mpg Hummer for only $Y/month additional!"
- AimForTheBushes 7y agoI like this analogy but they should just give me the compact car rate of gas for my Hummer.
- gcbw2 7y agothat's a very bad analogy. Apps waste way more bandwidth. It's better if you turn it around: "unlimited gas for you 4mpg hummer. But we will nickel and dime you if you try to ever fill up the 1L reserve tank on your electric scooter"
- y4mi 7y agoabsolutely not. the tethered devices use the same "gas tank" and would have to be directly connected at all times for that to work. so maybe "you get unlimited diesel for this car, but you'll have to pay extra if you want to charge your phone or laptop from the electricity generated from our diesel"
- dboreham 7y agoThis is an age-old trick humans like to play on each other that Economists have given the name "Price Discrimination" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
- mobjack 7y agoIt is more like paying for a service where you can eat unlimited apples for a flat fee each month. If you want the ability to give apples to friends to eat, then it will costs extra.
- swiley 7y agoThat totally sounds like a startup idea. Maybe have an app or webpage where you push a button and some contracted delivery person brings you an apple.
- sneak 7y agoI am still annoyed (at Apple, to be clear) at the fact that my iPhone asks for carrier permission before functioning as a WWAN-to-WiFi NAT. I have to carry two devices because of this. :( Also in this list: Apple allowing video players to disable seeking in ads. It’s my hardware, fuckers.
- arbitrage 7y ago> It’s my hardware, fuckers. No, it's not. This has been shown time and again.
- brachi 7y agoYou have to make it your own.
- throwaway3627 7y agoExactly. You usually gotta "color outside the lines" if you want anything cool, i.e., jailbreaking (jb) or hackintoshing. I'm surprised no one's tried hackiosing on custom hardware, although it would take a pile of enginerding and gnidrenigne.
- vbezhenar 7y agoIf it's your hardware, you're free to install your own software which does not honor those checks. But apparently you can't do that, so it's not entirely your hardware, as you can't run any code on it.
- Causality1 7y agoAnother note: just because you have a VPN running on your phone and have enabled Android's "always on VPN" and "block non-VPN traffic" options doesn't mean that devices connected to the phone hotspot will send their data over the VPN. You need to have it configured on the guest device as well.
- whizzkid 7y agoThere is only one justified reason for phone companies to check if you are using your phone as a router, and that is when they provide unlimited data to your contract. Unlimited data is provided given that you are going to use it on your personal devices and not to act as an ISP to everyone around you. Other than that you generally pay for X GB of data and it is none of their business how you spend it.
- voodootrucker 7y agoI would argue from a "well regulated market" perspective that is not justified either. A byte's a byte.
- i_am_proteus 7y agoA byte for your use is not the same as a byte for someone else's use. Setting up a hot spot for other people could be viewed as reselling the service (even if you don't charge for it).
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's still creating restrictions that go against the "natural" behavior of the medium. That's why they need sophisticated tech solutions to enforce it - it's not natural to label bytes, it's not natural to even talk about using the connection yourself vs. reselling the service.
- bitwize 7y agoCopyright laws are restrictions that go against the "natural" behavior of any digital medium. Yet we still imple,ent and enforce them. That's what restrictions are, a way to turn ugly reality into a situation that's more felicitous for everyone.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoYup. That's why copyright laws ended up being a total dumpster fire. They're a desperate attempt at making digital data behave as if it were Gutenberg-era books. Not only they fight uphill against the medium, but by refusing to be grounded in reality, they opened themselves to abuse - and thus became captured by the rent-seekers from various industries.
- shmerl 7y agoIf mobile ISP is snooping on your traffic and violates net neutrality by forbidding tethering and the like, just use a VPN.
- dboreham 7y agoDespite the downvotes this is not an unreasonable suggestion. However this would only work if the tether/hotspot traffic were tunneled opaquely down the VPN. But I suspect that isn't the case (the phone vendor owns the VPN client and associated kernel networking, and arranges to not tunnel the proxied traffic).
- shmerl 7y agoUse a phone where you can install an open OS that you control. It's ridiculous, if the phone is actively preventing you from setting up networking the way you need it. You can also use some simple ssh forwarding from the phone (like SOCKS5) even if VPN is not available. ISP won't be able to differentiate that from other traffic.
- mlurp 7y agoVery interesting! I'm on a budget mobile service provider (Cricket), and only recently discovered that they disable using my phone as a hotspot on my plan. I called them up, because I wouldn't mind paying a small amount extra every month to have that ability. However, they told me that they actually couldn't provide it with my phone even if I paid, because they didn't support my phone (Pixel). Then they tried to upsell me on "compatible phones"... I used this phone as a hotspot with my previous provider, so I know it can be a hotspot. But I don't know much about the technical side of this. Does anyone know if what they're saying is plausible? (Ie, they can't offer it for my specific phone) I briefly tried a few apps for this purpose, but none of them worked.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI know Cricket user who rooted their Pixel 3a to get around this problem. Seems to work fine for them.
- mlurp 7y agoYeaaaahhhhh..I found that option while searching, but I don't want to risk messing up my phone
- gberger 7y agoThey probably haven't developed the whitelisting for this particular phone.
- eythian 7y agoWhat happens when you try? Does it pop up a message saying that your provider hasn't authorised it? I used to use Vodafone NL, and apparently they used a SIM provider ID that matched Verizon or something in the US, so my phone (Pixel 1 at the time) would ask Verizon if this SIM was allowed to use tethering, and of course it said no. Part of the reason I moved carriers, also the new one has unlimited data which is better anyhow. Vodafone had no idea what was going on, although they did try. Eventually they just said they couldn't help. Anyway, maybe something similar going on for you.
- gruez 7y ago>MAC address inspection AFAIK this wouldn't work because MAC addresses don't get forwarded to the next network segment. On android, the phone acts as a router (with its own DHCP server assigning devices a local IP address), so I doubt that information is getting passed on. >Inspecting the network packets for their TTL (time to live) >TCP/IP Stack Fingerprinting >Looking at the Destination IP/URL Probably works, but I'd imagine it's pretty easy to bypass by proxying your connection through the phone.
- codedokode 7y agoIt is difficult for an average user to set up a proxy, and there is still a possibility to detect PC by analyzing unencrypted DNS queries to MS domains for telemetry servers.
- gruez 7y ago>It is difficult for an average user to set up a proxy I'm sure that if there's enough demand for it, someone would make an app. A simple SOCKS5/stunnel server with a few buttons shouldn't be hard to make. >and there is still a possibility to detect PC by analyzing unencrypted DNS queries to MS domains for telemetry servers. This would really only be an issue if you don't have VPN killswitch set up on the tethered devices. Even if this can't be prevented, disconnecting phones because they made a connection to MSFT telemetry servers can be easily turned into a DoS vector. Want to mess with someone's internet? Put a bunch of img/script tags to MSFT telemetry servers on your site.
- seandougall 7y agoBack around the time this SE question was asked (2013), I was using an awesome open-source app [1] to tether on my iPhone. It was very easy to use, though you had to be able to compile and run it yourself, as there's no way it would be allowed in the App Store. I would be surprised if something similar didn't exist for Android. I needed to tether on train rides a few times a year, which was really not worth paying for the service. Nowadays I can do it without an exorbitant extra charge (aside from the extra data that tethering guzzles), so there's no need for it. [1] https://github.com/tcurdt/iProxy https://github.com/tcurdt/iProxy
- nkozyra 7y agoLast year I called T-Mobile for some relatively minor reason and then got into a conversation about this "upgrade" I could get that would knock my bill down $20 a month, provide option X, Y and Z. It sounded too good to be true so I just kept asking if I'd lose anything. I was assured, no, it's all benefit. In the past if I had an internet outage at home I'd switch to to tethered phone and have no drop in speed. In fact, it was faster than work or home. I recently moved and while waiting for internet installation suddenly found my tethered rate went down to .25/mpbs, whereas in the past it was up around 40mbps up and down. My phone itself reached these speeds via LTE. It became immediately apparent what I'd signed up for in my "upgrade" the year prior. I had been on some grandfathered plan that had no such restriction, and by "upgrading" sacrificed my ability to tether without moving to a One Plus plan. Of course in the heat of all of this I asked myself that same question: "how does T-Mobile know?" Some of the suggestions here seem unlikely since I'm still able to get good speeds via the phone simultaneously while limited via computer. The MAC address thing seems compelling but I'm obviously not going to go around spoofing anything just because I got duped by my provider. I've been a T-Mobile customer forever, but that kind of deception was really, really insulting.
- nneonneo 7y agoI was on T-Mobile until recently (moved to Canada, where we _finally_ have unlimited plans too), and I worked around the throttling by running a SOCKS5 proxy on my phone and tunneling through that while connected to the tether. The packets appear to originate from my phone (iPhone) rather than the tethered device, and I got uncapped speeds.
- lunchables 7y agoVery nice! What iOS app are you using? I didn't realize this kind of functionality would be allowed.
- nneonneo 7y agoI originally made my own app: compiled an OSS SOCKS proxy with a simple iOS wrapper, deployed with a free developer account. Later, I switched to using Pythonista (paid app available on the App Store) to run a SOCKS proxy written in Python. I should add - Pythonista is a pretty amazing app, given that it’s a proper App Store app that lets you write your own Python programs with full access to iOS APIs (including the ability to dlopen private frameworks via ctypes...). The iOS app I “wrote” is up on GitHub: https://github.com/nneonneo/socks5-ios https://github.com/nneonneo/socks5-ios. It’s really barebones; I knocked it together in less than an hour since I rather desperately wanted a good internet connection at the time :)
- londons_explore 7y agoAndroid connects to the phone network using a different type of connection (DUN) to send tethered data. The code to do that is in android here: https://github.com/aosp-mirror/platform_frameworks_base/blob/355dbae680994002c48d7a66cb276a65393ecbbb/services/core/java/com/android/server/connectivity/Tethering.java#L1090 https://github.com/aosp-mirror/platform_frameworks_base/blob... There is a setting you can set to disable it and make the provider treat all traffic as if it is non-tethered. adb shell settings put global tether_dun_required 0 Considering how knowledgeable the HN crowd is on all things networking, it surprises me to see so much uncertainty on something so easy to check in the code!
- jm_l 7y agoOn AOSP master I believe the new setting is: net.tethering.noprovisioning consumed here: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/opt/telephony/+/refs/heads/master/src/java/com/android/internal/telephony/dataconnection/DcTracker.java#1740 https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/opt/tel...
- JTbane 7y agoFeels good that since I use LineageOS, I can disallow cell providers from blocking me if I tether.
- tinus_hn 7y agoThe provider can see all your traffic. It’s not hard to tell the traffic isn’t coming from a phone, even if you try to be clever.
- wwright 7y agoHow much would something like Wireguard mitigate this?
- simcop2387 7y agoJust about entirely. They could block the VPN or try to say that it's got to be teathered but it's much more difficult for them to say that or back without causing serious issues for customers.
- turtlebits 7y agoI don't necessarily understand it, but for my Samsung note 8, I used a settings/flag editor and added 'DUN' to my LTE settings and was able to turn on Tethering, whereas normally, it would turn itself off after enabling "mobile hotspot".
- bluedino 7y ago>> This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. What reasoning would they have for that? It's an Android stackexchange after all.
- mattigames 7y agoIt's my main caveat against the stackexchange network, many questions like this one are extremely useful and on-topic but the moderation has some weird standards of whats on-topic and what is not; one of the worst examples is when one particular question is the first result on Google about a common problem but due over-moderation is now closed and nobody can enter updated answers, such is the case for "Is there a tool to convert JavaScript to Typescript?" https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14412164/is-there-a-tool-to-convert-javascript-files-to-typescript#comment95235624_14412164 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14412164/is-there-a-tool...
- gcbw2 7y agoThe actual answer nobody is giving: Q: How can phone companies detect tethering? A: by working with Google and Apple to inject code in android and IOS to serve that purpose.
- _bxg1 7y agoI put Cyanogenmod on a device and tethered for years without any carrier warnings. Then I accidentally got a device with a locked bootloader and tethered by rooting it to switch a flag; I got a warning from that one. Then I got another open device, put LineageOS on it and tethered uneventfully for another couple years. I'm sure my custom ROMs played some games to disguise the traffic, but at least on AT&T it seemed to work without a hitch.
- sofaofthedamned 7y agoOne thing others haven't mentioned is DNS. If your phone is trying to lookup Windows Update it's a surefire way of knowing this didn't originate in the phone.
- Marsymars 7y agoWindows 10 Mobile is still receiving Windows updates for another five months!
- swsieber 7y agoAt the turn of this year, my provider started blocking requests made through a VPN. Boo
- swsieber 7y agoMy carrier started blocking requests from my tethered computer if they are made through a VPN ... that doesn't seem like it obviously fits into any category? Any guesses as to how they can do that?
- Nextgrid 7y agoTime to start blocking their requests to your bank account. As to why they’re doing that I have no idea, I guess they want to see your traffic in the clear and so block most VPN protocols (though you should be able to get a TLS-based VPN working over port 443 as it’ll look like standard HTTPS).
- swsieber 7y agoMy VPN is definitely going over 443, so I'm not sure what's happening. It looks like the VPN handshake stuff completes successfully though.
- kevin_b_er 7y agoTTL is a nice cheap trick. I figure you can bypass it by adjusting your TTL to be +1 on the computer, or by running a VPN client that acts as a proxy on the phone. This is another excellent question from the earlier days of stackexchange that are all now "offtopic". Its sad to see it consistently lose informative questions. Stackexchange's policy shift toward marking any slightly general question as offtopic is a sad state of affairs.
- dugite-code 7y agoOn windows adjusting the TTL is simple. From my reading Android uses a TTL of 30 netsh int ipv4 set glob defaultcurhoplimit=29 netsh int ipv6 set glob defaultcurhoplimit=29 Alternative to a VPN as a proxy you can install Termux on Android to install and run a sockS5 proxy.
- tombert 7y agoI don't think it works anymore, but it used to be that you could get around tether-blocking in MetroPCS by simply setting your user-agent string to Chrome Android; they moved to something more clever because I guess enough dorks like me figured it out.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- joecool1029 7y agoOh hell yeah, this is my topic. I really really really hate Comcast's poor reliability and cost in my area (seriously you can see me bitch on usenet today: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.online-service.comcast/nS0m4rEJDLo https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.online-service.c... ) so I rely on a stack of various LTE providers that are comparable in speed. I'm tethered right now to Sprint which really doesn't appear to give a shit. Their network is encapsulated to all hell since it's ipv6-only so I recommend decreasing MTU's when connecting to it (something like 1320 seems to work or sites like duckduckgo get blackholed). Sprint sucks unless you're line of sight to a band 41 tower and/or have a HPUA device. T-Mobile detects tethering a matter of ways. I use a Moto E LTE 2015 (surnia) as a dedicated modem phone for them. I modified lineageOS 14.1 for my specific use case (namely just to add TTL as a target in the kernel for iptables). I also use Network Signal Guru to lock it to the meatiest band in my area (band 4 broadcasts at 20mhz) The magical iptables option to pass is: iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65 They detect certain services like playstation network, so you have to VPN that so it isn't counted. I disable ipv6 on the t-mobile APN too as an added layer of protection. Average use is around 250-300gb/mo, this is rural so it's unlikely it causes any quality of service issues (and I don't end up subject to deprioritization issues after 50GB) EDIT: Should also mention at least T-Mobile used to do DPI on the User Agent sent by browser years ago. They don't appear to do that anymore (widespread HTTPS made that pretty useless). Back then I used to just get around port blocking by ramming my traffic through SSH dynamic port forwarding on port 143, normally used for IMAP. This was for T-Zones service level in the early 2000's. Oh and for AT&T in the later 2000's I used to buy import phones that weren't in their system and use them on the non-smartphone unlimited plan until they got wise to that. EDIT2: If you find ethics of this questionable, can't be hassled to figure this stuff out, and/or still want to use LTE unlimited where money is not a concern there's plans for that: https://unlimitedville.com/ https://unlimitedville.com/
- swozey 7y agoWhat part of your process gets you around deprioritization? I thought that there was no way to circumvent that. I had to tether for a month or two on tmo and as soon as I hit 22 or 25GB my entire account was throttled and I'd barely get 2MBps. I wound up going with an ATT ipad plan that also had deprio at a point (30gb? I forget). But everything about the ATT plan was so much better. I tried a lot of ways to get around that (most of what you mentioned, tweaking my hops and what not) and never made any progress so I assumed it was at the network level and I'd have no control.
- aembleton 7y agoMany years ago, on a UK network (I think it was o2, but might have been GiffGaff) I couldn't and didn't tether. However, one app would make calls out with a User Agent that looked like IE6 which caused the network to disconnect my data and require me to phone up to get it unblocked.
- lbriner 7y agoOne of my previous providers was literally looking at the browser user-agent header. If I just connected as normal via my phone, I was blocked very quickly. If I used developer tools in Chrome to pretend to be an iPhone or Android, it worked without complaint. I'm not sure there is much else with which the network can tell is there?
- collsni 7y agoTtl
- collsni 7y agoSet your ttl lower than your phones or 1 higher
- jmpman 7y agoI used to have the old AT&T unlimited plan. A few years ago, they cancelled it due to tethering. I called in to complain, as I know how to tether “illegally”, but hadn’t been doing it. Eventually realized that I’d connected my phone to my mother in-laws new Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the Jeep must have been making IP connections through my phone. Just to spite AT&T, I switched to Verizon.
- deniska 7y agoYeah, I recently had to change TTL on my laptop to 65 to avoid tethering fees.
- elkos 7y agoI never had this issue in EU. Is there a common EU mandate that prohibits carriers to discriminate tethered or untethered traffic?
- hkai 7y agoA VPN solves it.