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Root MetroPCS capped data because of "unreasonable" use

To clarify, it's not illegal to tether. It's a breach of the terms of service. Each carrier has it's own policy how to enforce their contracts including automatically adding plans or charging for the overages. They can also throttle your service or cut it off entirely. They can also cancel your contract at which point, because you breached, the early termination fee would apply. Okay, don't pay it, but it goes against your credit nonetheless.

These are the risks you take personally. But, it also effects all customers in how the network performs and how the carriers adjust their plans and terms to keep the operations profitable.

Sprint (et. al.) don't "let people do it" per se. They simply aren't enforcing this now. When it does become enough of a problem, they will, just like T-mobile.

While I agree that most people don't care about those who abuse tethering while it doesn't effect them, you can be assured they are none too happy when the rates go up or the data stream compromised is because of it. Just like you don't care about the other guy speeding on the highway until they lower the speed limit or put in another traffic light.
 
To clarify, it's not illegal to tether. It's a breach of the terms of service. Each carrier has it's own policy how to enforce their contracts including automatically adding plans or charging for the overages. They can also throttle your service or cut it off entirely. They can also cancel your contract at which point, because you breached, the early termination fee would apply. Okay, don't pay it, but it goes against your credit nonetheless.

These are the risks you take personally. But, it also effects all customers in how the network performs and how the carriers adjust their plans and terms to keep the operations profitable.

Sprint (et. al.) don't "let people do it" per se. They simply aren't enforcing this now. When it does become enough of a problem, they will, just like T-mobile.

While I agree that most people don't care about those who abuse tethering while it doesn't effect them, you can be assured they are none too happy when the rates go up or the data stream compromised is because of it. Just like you don't care about the other guy speeding on the highway until they lower the speed limit or put in another traffic light.
^^^very well said.

Continuing to kick the dead horse of morality is going to end now. Abusing unlimited data will result in unpleasant consequences for both the abusers and the innocent bystanders from the carriers. That's the truth. It's happened before and it will happen again. OK, so that debate is over.

A very revered former mod here used to have a saying. "Make your blood boil, report, don't retort." Advice to be heeded.:)


*/thread cleaned
 
Hey, sorry to post after we ended the discussion, but I was wondering if somebody could tell me if metropcs is really tracking my tethered data usage because when i looked at mymetro and metropcs website it didn't show, but when i looked at data usage from my phone it shows 4.20gb used.

p.s: wasn't sure if i should post here. I didn't want to create another forum for a small question.
 

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Hey, sorry to post after we ended the discussion, but I was wondering if somebody could tell me if metropcs is really tracking my tethered data usage because when i looked at mymetro and metropcs website it didn't show, but when i looked at data usage from my phone it shows 4.20gb used.

p.s: wasn't sure if i should post here. I didn't want to create another forum for a small question.
That is T-mobile and Metro rents spectrum from t-mobile so if t-mobile's doing it Metro is going to be doing it

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=

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Hey, thanks for posting so quickly, I know t-mobile is stopping abusers and MetroPCS will eventually. But what I'm asking is are they tracking my tethered data usage because when I saw pic of someone's Hotspot usage it was 22.6 gb out of 6gb but when I looked at mine, I don't see any Hotspot usage.
 

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Hey, thanks for posting so quickly, I know t-mobile is stopping abusers and MetroPCS will eventually. But what I'm asking is are they tracking my tethered data usage because when I saw pic of someone's Hotspot usage it was 22.6 gb out of 6gb but when I looked at mine, I don't see any Hotspot usage.
With all this going on if they weren't I was just assume they are now
 
Yeah even if they haven't implemented new protections to block unauthorized tethering that doesn't mean that they can't tell what you are doing. Just because you are using a user agent that they haven't figured out how to block doesn't mean that they can't tell the difference between the user agent you are using and the correct user agent for your specific device. All arguments about right and wrong put aside, the fact is T-Mobile & MetroPCS are pissed about all the unauthorized tethering that is going on and they WILL do something about it! The way I see it, they have 3 options.

1 Demand that manufacturers lock the bootloader of every last device that they sell. I'm not talking about system write protection her either. I'm talking about the kind of locked bootloader that will brick your phone if you modify it in any way that requires root access.

2 Cap data for all customers and get rid of unlimited data plans like AT&T and Verizon have already done. (Both of those companies are also famous for refusing to sell phones with unlocked bootloaders)

3 Cap data for anyone who they catch violating their rules regarding tethering and possibly cancel their account completely. I'm sure that that when you sign up for service with them there is a clause in the fine print that allows them to do this.

They could also implement any combination of these three measures.

I'm not arguing about the morality of unpaid tethering here, just saying that anyone who continues to do so should know what the risks are now that the CEO of the company has put the whole Android community on notice. If you do decide to keep on tethering insane amounts of data I won't flame you or jump on your ass just please know the risks you are taking and don't brag about how much data you use while doing so.
 
Yeah even if they haven't implemented new protections to block unauthorized tethering that doesn't mean that they can't tell what you are doing. Just because you are using a user agent that they haven't figured out how to block doesn't mean that they can't tell the difference between the user agent you are using and the correct user agent for your specific device. All arguments about right and wrong put aside, the fact is T-Mobile & MetroPCS are pissed about all the unauthorized tethering that is going on and they WILL do something about it! The way I see it, they have 3 options.

1 Demand that manufacturers lock the bootloader of every last device that they sell. I'm not talking about system write protection her either. I'm talking about the kind of locked bootloader that will brick your phone if you modify it in any way that requires root access.

2 Cap data for all customers and get rid of unlimited data plans like AT&T and Verizon have already done. (Both of those companies are also famous for refusing to sell phones with unlocked bootloaders)

3 Cap data for anyone who they catch violating their rules regarding tethering and possibly cancel their account completely. I'm sure that that when you sign up for service with them there is a clause in the fine print that allows them to do this.

They could also implement any combination of these three measures.

I'm not arguing about the morality of unpaid tethering here, just saying that anyone who continues to do so should know what the risks are now that the CEO of the company has put the whole Android community on notice. If you do decide to keep on tethering insane amounts of data I won't flame you or jump on your ass just please know the risks you are taking and don't brag about how much data you use while doing so.
On the bright side of things it looks like the first offense is just a warning
 
Yeah even if they haven't implemented new protections to block unauthorized tethering that doesn't mean that they can't tell what you are doing. Just because you are using a user agent that they haven't figured out how to block doesn't mean that they can't tell the difference between the user agent you are using and the correct user agent for your specific device. All arguments about right and wrong put aside, the fact is T-Mobile & MetroPCS are pissed about all the unauthorized tethering that is going on and they WILL do something about it! The way I see it, they have 3 options.

1 Demand that manufacturers lock the bootloader of every last device that they sell. I'm not talking about system write protection her either. I'm talking about the kind of locked bootloader that will brick your phone if you modify it in any way that requires root access.

2 Cap data for all customers and get rid of unlimited data plans like AT&T and Verizon have already done. (Both of those companies are also famous for refusing to sell phones with unlocked bootloaders)

3 Cap data for anyone who they catch violating their rules regarding tethering and possibly cancel their account completely. I'm sure that that when you sign up for service with them there is a clause in the fine print that allows them to do this.

They could also implement any combination of these three measures.

I'm not arguing about the morality of unpaid tethering here, just saying that anyone who continues to do so should know what the risks are now that the CEO of the company has put the whole Android community on notice. If you do decide to keep on tethering insane amounts of data I won't flame you or jump on your ass just please know the risks you are taking and don't brag about how much data you use while doing so.

I understand, but it wasn't me who used the 22gb it was someone on the google+ community. I just borrowed the pic. I barely tether. When I saw the pic it clicked in my mind , I don't have the Hotspot usage on my metro. So i thought I would ask and see if they are really tracking me and if someone had the same issue as me.
 
I understand, but it wasn't me who used the 22gb it was someone on the google+ community. I just borrowed the pic. I barely tether. When I saw the pic it clicked in my mind , I don't have the Hotspot usage on my metro. So i thought I would ask and see if they are really tracking me and if someone had the same issue as me.
Honestly we don't really know and can't say definitively one way or the other. Just a week ago I would have been gung ho to help anyone who wanted to hide tether usage but the events in these last few days have changed the way I look at it. IN THE PAST I used to use hundreds of gigs a month sometimes but after what is happening I'm not trying to hide my tethering or take advantage any more.
 
If this was 10 years ago when 3G was still top dog and bandwidth wasn't as good as it is now, would understand the draconian measures. However being the carriers have on average 2 TB of backbone per region they wouldn't be so draconian about capping speeds. Yeah I know each tower has limits, but these arent the times of ISDN or Multidial, we have Fibre to the curb, 330 Mbit Cable (I have that), DSL is about to hit Gigabit, WiMAX, LTE. Shit, Dial up and Satellite are the only ones that are slow. So I have no clue as to why these providers are freaking out about data caps
 
Because.... If so many people can afford 60$ for "unlimited"......
So many people can afford more for " more unlimited "......
I was on a 45 dollar "unlimited".....
Then they made me pay 55 for" unlimited "....
until I bought this phone and my plan changed because I somehow changed my plan (?!?!?!?!?!?)...
My wife said a few things about it.. And I got the ZMAX for 99$ ... But, still got the poopy end of the stick on the plan..
Their conditions have conditional conditions that smell....
But, at least I'm not trapped in a hole like my mom and her crazy AT&T insanely expensive plan she got with her S4.... She doesn't text,browse, or go to play store... Heck... She barely figured out how to answer it on her own.......100+$ a month.....
 
And my dad.. That I thought would love all the geeky android stuff.....
Bought a new flip phone (?!?!?!?!) ...
Because it pairs with his Honda...
Parents man.....
 
To be honest, I wouldn't give a damn about who is tethering how much if it wasn't for the fact that now I'm getting throttled because of all the jackasses that are still using hundreds of gigs a month. MetroPCS and T-Mobile are so desperate to catch people doing unauthorized tethering that they are starting to count any user agent spoofery to your hotspot data. I use an app called Advanced Download Manager to download files directly to my external SD card instead of having to constantly move everything after I download it, and now every bit of data used by that app is getting counted against my hotspot data because Advanced Download Manager has a user agent option in the settings. I'm really getting pissed because all the people trying to get something for nothing aren't "sticking it to the man" anymore. Now they are sticking it to the rest of us.
 
To be honest, I wouldn't give a damn about who is tethering how much if it wasn't for the fact that now I'm getting throttled because of all the jackasses that are still using hundreds of gigs a month. MetroPCS and T-Mobile are so desperate to catch people doing unauthorized tethering that they are starting to count any user agent spoofery to your hotspot data. I use an app called Advanced Download Manager to download files directly to my external SD card instead of having to constantly move everything after I download it, and now every bit of data used by that app is getting counted against my hotspot data because Advanced Download Manager has a user agent option in the settings. I'm really getting pissed because all the people trying to get something for nothing aren't "sticking it to the man" anymore. Now they are sticking it to the rest of us.

I understand how you feel, trust me. I have been throttled a few times by MetroPCS and Boost Mobile long before I hit my cap because of "suspicious activity", which was utter bullshit. What they called suspicious activity was Google play installing all my apps if I installed a customer rom or did a factory reset.

T-Mobile and MetroPCS have tons and tons of bandwidth, so throttling doesn't make a damn bit of sense, especially if they are correct with the small percentage of users who do it.
 
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