Hide Tethering From AT&T While Using iPhone Tethering Apps (Jailbreak)
| Tweet |
If you are jailbroken, you are likely familiar with using tethering applications from Cydia. For those that aren’t familiar, Tethering is the act of getting a laptop or other personal computer connected to the internet, using your mobile device (aka, your iPhone). This type of service is offered by wireless carriers, such as AT&T, however they unjustifiably charge you a fee to use it. Every smart phone owner knows that charging for this service is rediculous, and wrong… so us in the jailbreak community chose not to pay it. We pay for those GBs every month, and we’ll use them how we want!
Unfortunately, as many have been discovering in the last few months, AT&T actually knows you are doing it. Strange right? You’d think that data passing into the phone would just be read as data used by the phone, and that the connection between two devices on the local network (between your computer and phone) wouldn’t be seen globally. Well, as it turns out, it’s not so strange once you know HOW they are figuring it out, and it’s actually pretty simple.
In an article from the iPhoneDownloadBlog, they mention a recent post made over at AndroidPolice offers insite on this particular situation that’s pretty interesting, especially if you like to tether, and you don’t pay (like when using MyWi). It looks like AT&T knows we’re tethering pretty easily:
“Jailbroken iPhones typically use the same tethering technique as a standard iPhone, the one that’s already present in iOS. This method exposes tethering activity quite readily, because the iPhone, when in tethering mode, sends traffic through an alternate APN (AT&T access point/router) for the express purpose of identifying the traffic as tethered data. This makes it extremely easy for AT&T to identify whether or not an iOS device is utilizing tethering, and just how much of their data is consumed via tethering.
Some tethering applications for iOS make use of alternative methods and route tethered traffic through the phone’s normal data APN, but by and large, most jailbreakers stick with the stock application because it’s easy to use and doesn’t require any complicated setup. In fact, many iPhone users jailbreak for the sole purpose of avoiding AT&T’s tethering fees (for why, see next section). These are the people AT&T’s is going after.”
What’s really needed then, is an app that uses the same APN as the iPhone does normally, rather than a special one. Popular jailbreak app “MyWi” actually uses the special one (as of now), so this app will likely get you caught. However, there are a couple alternatives that may actually save you, such as PdaNet. I haven’t ever really paid too much attention to PdaNet since I discovered MyWi, but now that this is out in the open, I will. PdaNet comes with a special toggle inside the app that allows users to “hide” their tethering activity. This app uses the same APN as the iPhone, so there is no way to track it!
Another app that is capable of hiding your tethering activity, is “TetherMe” which also uses the same APN. Honestly, PdaNet is likely the better app to chose if you don’t want to Pay AT&T TWICE for your data, and LOSE unlimited as well (and who wants to do that!?). Hopefully, the developers of MyWi will catch onto this, and adjust their app to use this APN as well, because it’s by far the best tethering application for iPhone. Only time will tell.
PdaNet and TetherMe are both in Cydia right now. Check them out!
Excellent post. I appreciate the technical discussion. Can you expand on why PdaNet is a better app than TetherMe?
It’s because of the slight boost of speed. It’s setup and execution of tethering has a more “native” approach than TetherMe, even though you’d barely notice it. It’s in the backend of things. The connection with PdaNet is much more secure too though, considering it’s Wired. They are essentially the same, except for those two aspects. I doubt you would notice much of a speed difference with either one though.