T-Mobile hotspot bypass ( gripe )

T-mobile seems to be enforcing  the use of our  phone & as a  wifi hotspot within some data plans.

I'm on a pre-pay plan at $70.00 a month unlimited data/voice/text,  and  been a customer of  t-mobile for  over 2.5 years with this  "unlimited plan". I've always used my  phone integral hotspot  for data access for a year or so. Approx 6 months ago, I switched to a pre-paid plan where  your taxes+fees are cheaper.    ( It saved me approx $25.00 per month btw )

It has disadvantages tho;

•  no billing or receipt available or details to your plan usage

• t-mobile stores and outlet seems to be clueless on the plan details from what I can tell

• t-mobile own website has not information post on the plan for the general public to review before acquiring that plan

• they enable some child protection block that I had to call and disable

• the billing alerts;  just plain-ass  sucks. As they keep sending me alert telling me  my account will expire, but I have  way over $120.00 on the account 

Now all of suddenly,  T-mobile starts issuing the following page  re-direction when tethering thru my  Nexus google phone

Okay,

So what they are doing exactly ?  They are  inspecting the  user-agent within the http browser request.

If the user-agent is NOT of some type of  mobile phone device, they redirect you to this page to make your life  miserable and to milk you for a plan upgrade or in my case I went to a  downgraded plan  from 70usd a month to 60usd  a month & with no unlimited data but now with hotspot capability  :(

Here's how you can bypass TMobile stupid little tricks & games.  ( The same works on ATT btw )

Install a User-Agent switcher and switch your browser agent to let's say;  a iphone, samsung or nexus phone.

reference:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

I used this trick in firefox & just to navigate any web firewalls.

In the above add-on tools, I have  iPhone3.0 selected for my  User-Agent. Keep in mind  the user-agent type & some types of websites, will reformat the display page for the mobile-device. So your google mail display would be slightly different than let's say a straight firefox or IE user.

It's silly that the phone companies have to resort to a" nickel and dime" you for everything and in this case the  they are NOT providing the wifi-hotspot,  but your phone and it's  native capability  are.

So instead of using let's say a T-Mobile usb jetpack stick & purchasing yet another device, plan and contract, T-mobile identifies us.  They really want  you to buy more devices such as ;

Why would they even care if the data is originating from a phone,  or a device tether thru the phone? Vrs another  stand-alone hotspot device? I'll answer that; " they are greedy "


I hope this trick comes in handy,  and if you refuse to be steered by the cell/telco phone companies.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

So stick it to em !  :)


Ken Felix
Freelance Network/Security Engineer
kfelix ---a---t--- socpuppets ----d---o---t----- com