Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
Screwbal said:
Anyone agree that its safe to assume if I setup my own private vpn at home I can vpn through that as an encrypted session which will stop att from snooping my data, then in turn if I vpn first then run a hotspot they'd be none the wiser?
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Click to collapse
I would say a resounding NO. They don't care if your data is encrypted or not, VPN will do absolutely nothing to mask the amount of packet data your device is sending/receiving. You most likely don't have unlimited data (if you did before) and will probably be charged per gigabyte if you go over your monthly allowance.
From my understanding, carriers really cant stop you from tethering without a "tethering plan" once your device is rooted. I believe that's why most carriers got rid of unlimited data and moved to the tiered data plans. If you happen to somehow still have unlimited data and generate a lot of bandwidth, once they realize that your using an absurd amount of data without a tethering plan, they will hit you hard with overage charges. I think Verizon charges per kilobyte, not sure about AT&T.
I still have unlimited LTE data with AT&T but know if I hit 5GB in a month they throttle the hell out of me since I've hit it before. The reason I ask is if/when I'd ever use it then it would be more for a light connection like say if the GF wants to use the ipad in the car on a road trip. Or if I get some on call issue for work where I need a connection for my laptop on the go but not as a replacement for any large data transfers.
I just thought part of how the carriers tell that people are tethering would be say if you have an android phone and they start to notice traffic from your device to say Windows Update or the ITunes store and hence the VPN encryption if used day to day would mask any calls later that would be tethering related.
They can't tell if you're tethering plain and simple.
Your phone is sending and receiving the packets so thats all they see, if an app or your phone broadcasts those packets it doesn't matter as your phone is the connection point.
At the end of the day your phone is asking to go to youtube.com if it gives youtube to your iPad all you carrier see is that your phone wants youtube, not why.
The safest way to tether is to always use a VPN on the client that your tethered to your hotspot with. There are some great super cheap VPNs out there that have great bandwidth and good security.
Carriers can definitely tell if you're tethering - this isn't rocket science when you're using packet capturing tools. If you're constantly going to websites with a desktop browser they can see from the browser stats that it's a desktop vs mobile.
The other method is perhaps capturing the mac address off the packet isn't from a mobile-branded device. Since the phone hotspot is NAT'ing all the traffic from your own little private lan to the outside public addressing it *should* only contain the phone's IP and MAC, but depending on the packets it could also contain information from a device within the private lan (mac addresses). I have never tested this but in theory it's possible.
It's one thing to tether a tablet or another phone, most likely seems you would probably not get caught doing that.. but still possible. Tethering your desktop/laptop.. yea you'll get caught.
Like I said, use a VPN and you most likely won't be caught.
I think no need to. ived been tethering since 2010 using rooted phone(or non rooted using foxfi) and my 3gb data plan limit is the same. no notice from att that they detected that I am tethering and sometimes I over 2gb so I pay extra 20 bucks though
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium
Yes so I have changed cell phones from an LG K425 piece of garbage to a Motorola Razer 2 phone but now I am getting notices that I have gone over my 10 gigs a month hot spot which I haven't EVER gotten in the past almost 2 years or more of service. Guessing the Razer 2 has somehow reported this usage whereas the old LG didn't? Any suggestions or comments about what to do about this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Related
Does Using the Internet Sharing Feature on the new 8525 ROM cause more charges if I have media works and unlimited internet or is that teathering?
If you tether on Media Net they will charge you for it, you are supposed to have the PDA connect plan. I heard of people getting away with it if you are just checking e-mails and such, but heavy usage is supposedly detected.
Others have also reported anything to being charged overages to just having been switched to the PDA Connect.
Owycx said:
If you tether on Media Net they will charge you for it, you are supposed to have the PDA connect plan. I heard of people getting away with it if you are just checking e-mails and such, but heavy usage is supposedly detected.
Others have also reported anything to being charged overages to just having been switched to the PDA Connect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, you are wrong, a little. While tethering is against the Terms of Service with ALL plans except the Laptop Connect Plan, it works fine AND I have NEVER been charged in almost two years. While I agree I dont tether as I use a home DSL line, I still use my share of data. Actually I use much more data without tethering, but with a PDA that happens.
@ wpbear:
Are you just using the Media Max plan then? Might as well save myself 20 bucks a month.
Thanks for the correction
All I know is that using SlingPlayer Mobile takes the same bandwidth whether I tether it or run it on my Dopod (which is to say a lot of data gets downloaded either way).
Definitely go with the MediaMax or Smartphone Connect plan. MediaMax 200 bundle will get you 200 text messages, Smartphone Connect will get you the XpressMail push e-mail. Both are $19.99 for unlimited internet.
(I have the MediaMax 200 bundle)
Ok so recently i was trying to work out the best way to get around the NAT issue when using my Note to tether.
For those that often query this, in the uk one of our providers 3 has a plan called "the one plan", for £25 a month i get 2000 cross network mins, 5000 3 to 3 mins, unlim texts, and ALL YOU CAN EAT DATA.
YES, all you can eat, anyway on this forum familiar to this will know about it already, but they basically have a soft cap of 450gb a month and fully allow data roaming and tethering on this plan, i believe the only network in england to allow this.
So of course i wanted to make full use of this,, and i use tethering as my internet as 3 in the uk is very fast, in my location i achieve connections through my note of 5mbps+, which is more than adequate for now, my average download speeds are around 700mbps, so i decided to stay with it as my home internet as with those stats it seemed pointless wasting money on home broadband.
The issue occurred when i connected my 360 via wifi to my note i would get NAT RESTRICTIVE warnings, stopping me from connecting to friends, i found a way around this, without needing any 3rd party android apps.
Step 1 - connect my note as usual by turning on portable hotspot.
step 2 - on my 360 i connected a crossover cable to my laptop or pc, whichever you use from the xbox.
Step 3 - is to goto your pc or laptops wireless adapter settings and enable ICS (sharing) and make sure any firewalls are disabled.
Step 5 - turn on your xbox and select wired instead of wireless, this will then use the shared connection on the pc ya connected to via the crossover, test your connection and bingo.
Problem solved, no more restrictive nat warnings.
This may or may not have already been solved on here, but i couldnt finding anything after fruitless hours of searching, this method works for any console you go online with and yes, the game i mainly play is fifa12 and BF and both are completely lagfree over the notes connection and the 3 network.
Just a warning on mobile providers though, i know some like sprint dont allow tethering, you would have to check that yourself with your network, they may charge extra to tether, so please be careful you dont run up huge bills, if youre in the uk and on 3, i know a few of you guys are, then the oneplan is the package you want, after all, nobody could use 450gb a month anyway, on average i use 85gig a month on my phone.
I hope this post may help someone else that is struggling with tethering.
by the way, sorry mods, i meant to post this in general not in Q&A, i do apologise, please feel free to move.
Well yesterday I was tethering like i've done every day on my device and I kept getting redirected to a tmobile webpage telling me to pay an extra $15 per month for tethering.
My T989 Sgsii is using CM7 and there is no tmobile tethering software on the device. Is anyone else able to tether? Im on a prepaid contract have have tethered every day for free since last december.
Im guessing tmobile is blocking my tethering on the network end, since all blocking/tethering management software has been removed from my phone.
Any advice? If i cant tether, i cant use up all 5 gigs i pay for, so ill probably get a cheaper plan or switch to straight talk.
Seems like we have the same problem?
I made a post on the Nexus One forum aswell.
zeus_chingon said:
Seems like we have the same problem?
I made a post on the Nexus One forum aswell.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup. Looks like we both have the same problem.
Tmobile must be somehow able to detect when my computer tries to hop on their network and blocks it.
Can anyone else who uses tmobile comment on this?
They're mainly catching you by looking at the headers of your http traffic, and assuming that http requests with desktop browser strings are coming from tethered PCs. If you change them to spoof Android's browser, T-mo can't tell the difference.
They could probe more deeply if they wanted to, but as a practical matter, they don't. If they blindly dip the net into the stream and just look for http traffic with desktop-browser identities, they can effortlessly catch 99% of the people who tether.
If you really want to hide your tethering from them, just subscribe to a PPTP VPN service like ibvpn.com. It's around $5/month (~$37 if you pay for the whole year up front), it'll TOTALLY hide what you're doing from T-Mobile (because all they'll see is an encrypted bitstream), and also comes in handy for using a wi-fi tablet with public access points (the reason *I* subscribe).
Just be careful to make sure your network connection doesn't drop while you're tethered, because there doesn't seem to be any way to tell Android, "Establish this VPN whenever there's connectivity, and DO NOT send ANY data via ANY means besides the VPN". If your connection drops, the VPN will break, and if the phone reconnects to T-Mo a half second later, it'll just silently send all network traffic going forward straight through T-Mobile until you reconnect to the VPN.
bitbang3r said:
They're mainly catching you by looking at the headers of your http traffic, and assuming that http requests with desktop browser strings are coming from tethered PCs. If you change them to spoof Android's browser, T-mo can't tell the difference.
They could probe more deeply if they wanted to, but as a practical matter, they don't. If they blindly dip the net into the stream and just look for http traffic with desktop-browser identities, they can effortlessly catch 99% of the people who tether.
If you really want to hide your tethering from them, just subscribe to a PPTP VPN service like ibvpn.com. It's around $5/month (~$37 if you pay for the whole year up front), it'll TOTALLY hide what you're doing from T-Mobile (because all they'll see is an encrypted bitstream), and also comes in handy for using a wi-fi tablet with public access points (the reason *I* subscribe).
Just be careful to make sure your network connection doesn't drop while you're tethered, because there doesn't seem to be any way to tell Android, "Establish this VPN whenever there's connectivity, and DO NOT send ANY data via ANY means besides the VPN". If your connection drops, the VPN will break, and if the phone reconnects to T-Mo a half second later, it'll just silently send all network traffic going forward straight through T-Mobile until you reconnect to the VPN.
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Click to collapse
best advice ive received so far - i was wondering how they were able to tell i was tethering. so i guess ill just need a browser that supports changing of the user agent? or is it more complicated to browser spoof?
I got the same message two days ago with a prepaid account on a CM9 exhibit ii
I'm not sure just changing the ua would help though because I'm getting the redirect on my android tablet as well, not just my laptop
The headers also give them an idea if more than one unit is being serviced, ie: hotspot. Encryption hides this as well. Bottom line? They will see tethering if they look for it.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA
I just use Opera. It hasn't failed me yet.
I believe the tether detection works by looking at the TTL for packets. It would be more than it should be if the client is using the device as a gateway. Thing is HTTPS still works once you've been "blocked" as well a bunch of other protocols, so it looks like they are just setting a captive portal for port 80 traffic. That said, I have a Zentyal VPN set up at home on my 50mb/s line, so once tethered I VPN into my home machine which then resets my gateway on my laptop to be the gateway on the VPN machine at home. This redirects ALL traffic through the VPN effectively side stepping t-mobiles blocking altogether. So as long as they still allow any data connections over my data plan while tethering than I can access everything like normal. One positive side effect is that general browsing seems to be MUCH faster given that the traffic is really actually being downloaded from my home connection and being siphoned through the VPN rather than having the phone itself and t-mobiles crappy gateway doing all the work.
---------- Post added at 08:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:00 AM ----------
Not to mention, everything is encrypted so t-mobile cant track any of my surfing habits either. I dont know about you all, but I tend to trust my ISP a little more than my wireless carrier.
So the issue has been solved.
I can tether on tmobiles network with no issues as long as i DONT use google chrome. Safari and Firefox access webpages no problem. Chrome has a user agent string which tmobile is able to see - and block by default on their network.
I'm on Tmobile w/ my Droid 3, stock OS. I tether once in a while, only use Chrome for browsing, and I've never gotten redirected.
--posted from my phone
EDIT: found another thread here with more posts:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=26477722
5318008 said:
I'm on Tmobile w/ my Droid 3, stock OS. I tether once in a while, only use Chrome for browsing, and I've never gotten redirected.
--posted from my phone
EDIT: found another thread here with more posts:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=26477722
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was using chrome all day today. First half of the day it was fine (and every other time before this but I've only had them for less than a month), but then after I started pushing maybe a gig through netflix in addition to using chrome THEN chrome stopped working. Had to use a user agent extension to get chrome working again.
So it might be a trigger set off by data usage to THEN check for the user agent
colonelcack said:
I was using chrome all day today. First half of the day it was fine (and every other time before this but I've only had them for less than a month), but then after I started pushing maybe a gig through netflix in addition to using chrome THEN chrome stopped working. Had to use a user agent extension to get chrome working again.
So it might be a trigger set off by data usage to THEN check for the user agent
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Makes sense. TMobile doesn't appear to have refarmed Portland yet, so when I do tether, I don't end up using that much data, what with being stuck on 2G and all.
Please look at my post regarding T-mobile tethering
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=26649587#post26649587
The methods employed by t-mobile to detect tethering are quite frivolous and an asinine move on their part. Their detection does not even work properly.
Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
fix for Tmobile blocking tethering with usb cable
To fix your issue just change your user agent in IE or Firefox. If you dont know how to do that just google change Useragent for IE or firefox.
Hopes this helps.
jordanishere said:
Well yesterday I was tethering like i've done every day on my device and I kept getting redirected to a tmobile webpage telling me to pay an extra $15 per month for tethering.
My T989 Sgsii is using CM7 and there is no tmobile tethering software on the device. Is anyone else able to tether? Im on a prepaid contract have have tethered every day for free since last december.
Im guessing tmobile is blocking my tethering on the network end, since all blocking/tethering management software has been removed from my phone.
Any advice? If i cant tether, i cant use up all 5 gigs i pay for, so ill probably get a cheaper plan or switch to straight talk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firefox doesn't work either...
jordanishere said:
So the issue has been solved.
I can tether on tmobiles network with no issues as long as i DONT use google chrome. Safari and Firefox access webpages no problem. Chrome has a user agent string which tmobile is able to see - and block by default on their network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to try Safari, but they pounced on me when using Firefox.... :crying:
Hello.
I have a rooted Chinese dual SIM phone. I've been tethering to my laptop using my phone networks unlimited phone data plan for the past couple of years but finally they've cut me off for cheating.
I've been googling how to get round the tethering detection solid for 24 hours now with no definitive answer. Almost all the responses on the search relate to either people in America having their tethering options removed (not me) or people who think all they have to do is switch their browsers user-agent.
Obviously any windows 7 laptop runs dozens of services that use the internet, even if its just checking for updates through the day, all of which can rightly be flagged up as tethering traffic.
I'm quite poor and don't want to spend more than I currently do for the internet, I use about 10GB a month just now with hundreds of calls and texts free for £12 (Giffgaff). I have another secret Giffgaff sim that isn't activated yet, the network coverage here is pretty good compared to the rest so I'm keen to stay with them.
I've read a lot about VPN's but tbh I don't trust them, I can't see why a network wouldnt be able to detect that straight away? Am I wrong there?
The ideal solution for me would be an app on the phone that routes all traffic through the device, so that everything they see looks as though it has come from my phone. Setting up the phone as a VPN server would work I think, then connect the computer to it when I need it, I've no idea where to start though.
You'd think this would be a problem with a common, working solution, given how useful it is. Sadly Google is clueless on this one.
VPN data should be encrypted so they cannot see what's in it. The only problem you have is trust/security. Do you trust the VPN server to handle your data safely.
Next solution would be to set your home PC as a VPN server. That way your data is your data. But that does mean leaving your PC on when you want to tether.
Data flow:
Laptop ===> Phone ===> ~~Mobile Internet~~ ===> Home PC -----> ~~Home Broadband~~ -----> To the internet
===> VPN secured
-----> Regular transmission
Well, I would suggest something like EasyTether, it's a USB tether from your phone/tablet to PC /Mac/Linux. But what exactly are you using to tether (not phone, as in app or setting)?
Sent from my LePanII using xda app-developers app
I have Tmobile unlimited data plan, however it is only for the smartphone. When tether, it has 500mb cap. Anyway to bypass this permamently? I'm currently using the user agent switch to Googlebot method to avert detection but some other apps or something else on the desktop or other user profile still inching its way up toward 500Mb cap. I don't want to try the vpn out to somewhere then internet out from there because they control your session and they can intercept your pw.
My DSL sucks badly. Cable is worse where I live every summer. Clearwire is too expensive. Thus, I'm looking elsewhere for more stable internet yet affordable. My current test setup is enable Nexus 4 hotspot then using DDWRT repeater bridge to amplify it up for the whole house. It seems fine so far, but I have to switch every browser's (firefox and chrome) user agent to googlebot for every user account profile on every desktop - kinda pain. Under Googlebot agent, some site does not work correctly. When I switch it back to chrome / firefox, it works fine. So I hope there is some better alternative to bypass Tmo detection. With its unlimited my internet would only be $20/mo and works reliably better than crappy $30 DSL or cable.
Would convert Nexus10 to CM10 avert detection 500MB limit on Tmobile. Anyone can confirm this?
Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks.
Sorry,
This Mod isn't included in AOKP or CM.
You have to install an extra app to set an alert.
buy the tethering plan. i have a 10gb high speed plan, and can use all of it for tethering if i want. plus all the low speed for tethering too, if i go over 10gb high speed.
Also clockwork mod tether I have herd gets around them blocking you as well. Requires no root. Install the app to your device from play store and the client to your computer.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app