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AT&T Data Charges?

I recently got an HTC Fuze with a new contract from AT&T... I opted not to get the data plan, because 90% of the time I have a WiFi connection, and didn't think the monthly charge was worth it.
Fast forward to today, and I have a $35 charge on my bill for 3.5MB of data. What I think happened, is that since I was a bit of a WM noob at the time, I didn't know to set the connection settings to default to WiFi instead of 3G, and every time a program tried to connect it enabled the data connection (even when I had it disabled in the connection manager) and tried to download through that. Now I know how to set it, but I still have this charge, for more than it would have cost me for a month of unlimited downloads. There was also no warning ANYWHERE that it would cost me money to use these programs.
Is there anything I can do to get them to drop it? I'd really rather not pay this ridiculous charge, and I don't plan on adding a data plan in the near future.
Also, does anyone know if there's a way to get AT&T to disable data on my plan altogether? I'd rather not have something like this happen again.

call att and tell them that this is your first time this has happened and you won't do it again. they usually take off the charge first time this happens. i'm not sure if they will disable data for you altogether, but there is a way to do this via your phone. Download and install the Diamond Tweak program to your phone and go to 6. Data and for 6.3 (Enabled: MEdia Net and Enabled: AT&T ISP GPRS), disable both of these. that should take care of it.
good luck with att!

nhshah7 said:
call att and tell them that this is your first time this has happened and you won't do it again. they usually take off the charge first time this happens. i'm not sure if they will disable data for you altogether, but there is a way to do this via your phone. Download and install the Diamond Tweak program to your phone and go to 6. Data and for 6.3 (Enabled: MEdia Net and Enabled: AT&T ISP GPRS), disable both of these. that should take care of it.
good luck with att!
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Click to collapse
Well, I've since HardSPL'd my phone and installed Elite RC3, and I think I have it permanently disabled.
I'll give them a call though, thanks.

Well, I just gave them a call, and the rep I spoke to said the best they could do is sign me up for 1 month of data, and credit me back the charges for last month. I pushed for a direct refund, but they said they couldn't do that, so I just bit it and signed up for the plan.
It would have came out to around $22 (i have a govt. discount), and he said it would be even cheaper because I signed up in the middle of the billing cycle. So all in all, I came out ahead, but I'm not sure if I could still have gotten the charges dropped outright or not.
Anyway, I now have unlimited data for the rest of the month... any ideas on how to use it? Can they detect tethering?

not that i know of
make sure u make the registry edit to enable it!

nhshah7 said:
not that i know of
make sure u make the registry edit to enable it!
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Click to collapse
Don't get too greedy but as long as you don't download torrents or movies and stuff you should be fine.

I called and they removed Internet from my phone completely.
Just remember you can't send MMS messages if you disable internet from their side.

This happened to me when I had the Tilt and again with the Fuze. The stupid things are set to go out onto the internet automatically for certain features (like weather). When I get a new phone, the first thing on my mind isn't disabling the internet, so I racked up a few pay-per-use charges because I was silly and assumed the thing wouldn't go online unless I told it to. AT&T immediately applied a credit both times when I called, no need to sign up for a month of data service.

I currently don't have have a Fuze but am planning to get one within a month or so and the Weather tab had been a worry becuase I don't have a data plan at all. In the TouchFLO settings tab inside connections you can flip off the data service along with WiFi, & Bluetooth wouldn't that work as well?
FYI: Opera 9.7 is claiming a turbo feature to compress files to speed download times for mobile users & may help to squeeze that extra bandwidth for you

I was stuck with this same problem just recently too, however i still cant figure out how to disable the internet but keep it just for MMS. Can someone help me out?

Another thing to check is make sure AGPS is off. It will connect to data no matter whether you disable connections through Diamond Tweak or NoData.

trace/track a GSM mobile telephones location

Hi All,
I know it is possibile to trace/track a GSM mobile telephones location all over the world.
I also know some compaines does this for chargeable service.
I am VERY interested in getting this for free! (I bet you are also).
Anyone know how to do this without empty our pockets??
Thanks,

in fact, i have the same interest.

who wouldnt love to know how to do this?

The only information you can get out of your own phone, is the ID of the basestation it is attached to. This is held in a register in the phone internals that can be read via the RIL interface.
It is also stored in the SIM. If the phone is totally powered off it will attempt to connect to the last known good base station on power on. (Quicker than sniffing around all available frequences for an suitable station.)
While a change of basestation could be detected by software running on a phone, only the Telco's database has the location of all active phones, so they can inform the basestation to contact your phone if there is an incoming call or data.
This data is theirs and theirs alone. It is valuable and confidential, hence the charge for any use of it.
In short all you can find out from your phone is where it is. But you know that anyway.

Erm... I just wrote this and then I realized that you want to track the device via GSM and not GPS. This will only work with GPS (can be activated in the background), sorry.
Just look for an application that allows you to track your device if its stolen. Some of the programs still work after changing simcard (which is not really interesting if it did not get stolen in the first place...). If everything is set up, you can easily receive a sms with the current location (you need to activate the programm by sending a sms).
If you need to know the exact position of the device like every second, you can use a jogging-trainer which logs the speed etc. But this will only store the positions on the device (you can upload them to your computer, but this can probably not be done via any wireless connection.
My english is not the best, I am sorry. But I am sure you're gonna understand everything ;D And no, I don't know any programs name because I don't use them.
XphX

Stephj, are You talking about GSM or CDMA? Because for GSM I know for sure that the Telco knows a bit more - at least it is possible to triangulate the user's approximate position using three or more base stations (and probably user's signal strength for each base station too). So the DB should hold more info about the base stations available to user's current position, as for example "ready to go base stations" or something like that.

For tracking the phone, you can try GLympse or LookOut, Look out is better if you loos your phone, it synchronize with their website, and can see the location on the phone anywhere in the world, even can delete your data from your web account on look out.

PSA: Stores using new tech to track us via our phone's wifi

So if you are walking around in public with wifi enabled - you are allowing stores to collect data such as how often and how long you are in their stores.
SOURCE

Wow that's kinda scary. Nice find, thank you.
Why is the right door always locked?

I don't find this nearly as unnerving as the NSA tracking me; if I don't like it, I can take my money elsewhere. We can't "opt out" from government tracking us. Retailers analyzing this data makes them more efficient; has the potential for reducing their advertising and marketing budgets, lowering their costs in one area, helps them lower prices in the long run.

erikoink said:
Retailers analyzing this data makes them more efficient; has the potential for reducing their advertising and marketing budgets, lowering their costs in one area, helps them lower prices in the long run.
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Click to collapse
I agree that to an extent this isn't really a big deal; so Dillards knows that you spend more time shopping for men's clothing than women's shoes.. Who cares right? Problem is, will they stop there? No, they wont. We don't know what information could be (easily) collected (and sold) in the future, that is the problem. Today its "customer 74593654 spent and hour in the store total, 20 minutes in refrigerated goods, 10 minutes in the deli, and 30 minutes in canned foods". But tomorrow, it could be "John Doe who visited our store for an hour today, mostly connects to these two wifi points; they must be his home and work locations. We sell his information to our partners in those areas."

I don't really think that they're tracking (or able to track) that type of information. They're just taking advantage of the way the 802.11 discovery process works.
When a WiFi device is on and not associated with an Access Point (AP), it announces it's presence and attempts to discover a nearby AP. APs respond to these queries with their BSSID and SSID which then gets listed in your device's list of connection options. If it's a "hidden" AP, it will only respond if the discovery query includes a specific SSID. Instead of responding, all it does is log the querying devices MAC Address and timestamps it. Other APs can compare the Rx signal strength and approximate the location of the device.
As far as I know, unless and until your device actually associates with (connects to) the AP, no other communication occurs. If there are any WiFI engineers in here that know of a way to force a device to associate to an AP remotely and request it send data that it isn't configured to send, I'm willing to be corrected.

WiredPirate said:
So if you are walking around in public with wifi enabled - you are allowing stores to collect data such as how often and how long you are in their stores.
SOURCE
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I'd like to bump because im honestly curious if anyone knows what kind of info they could pull from our phones through this.

erikoink said:
I don't really think that they're tracking (or able to track) that type of information. They're just taking advantage of the way the 802.11 discovery process works.
When a WiFi device is on and not associated with an Access Point (AP), it announces it's presence and attempts to discover a nearby AP. APs respond to these queries with their BSSID and SSID which then gets listed in your device's list of connection options. If it's a "hidden" AP, it will only respond if the discovery query includes a specific SSID. Instead of responding, all it does is log the querying devices MAC Address and timestamps it. Other APs can compare the Rx signal strength and approximate the location of the device.
As far as I know, unless and until your device actually associates with (connects to) the AP, no other communication occurs. If there are any WiFI engineers in here that know of a way to force a device to associate to an AP remotely and request it send data that it isn't configured to send, I'm willing to be corrected.
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Thank you for explaining that better.
Perhaps you connect to their free wifi, it's tempting if you want to save data or maybe you are in an area with bad reception.. Couldn't they then gather more personal information?

WiredPirate said:
Perhaps you connect to their free wifi, it's tempting if you want to save data or maybe you are in an area with bad reception.. Couldn't they then gather more personal information?
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Click to collapse
See, now if you associate with (connect to) their network, that changes things. But let's explore that hypothetical:
Have you ever heard of a "captive portal"? You see them in airports, hotels, anywhere with a so-called "guest wifi network", whereupon if you connect to their network and try to go to a website, it first redirects you to a page. And this page requires you to enter a password, or answer a survey, or agree to their terms and conditions. I'm sure we've all seen these.
Let's say that part of their terms are you must download their smart phone apps as a condition of connecting to their network and allowing you to be routed onto the global internet. Lets also say that in order to install the app, you have to grant the app certain permissions. Among these reading from areas of your phone, you might not want people reading from. As you suggested in a previous post, your list of saved WiFi networks, etc. Then yes, they could start gathering additional data. In this case, it's still your choice to use their resources, you still have the choice not to. Their network, their rules.
I will say this though.. be careful of how your device is configured. I think the setting is available that tells your device to connect to any available open (unsecured) WiFi network. I would advise anyone to disable this. Once your device connects to any network, and you an IP address on said network, then something could make a connection attempt to a vulnerable/compromised device (whether that be the network owner, or another compromised or rogue device) running some kind of Trojan service that responds to certain requests without you knowing. This of course, would be illegal and if they got caught doing this then they would face a huge backlash from their customers. I doubt they'd attempt something like this.

Mac address is worse enough.
Today's data is aggregated, ALWAYS.
You can buy it you can sell it... There isn't just one source.
Cameras in the shops running track analysis and soon facial recognition, mimics and so on.
Your mac address? Your router knows it.. And so your provider has access to it. He also has your ip.
Your ip? Most websites you visit and some more tracking / advertising sites.
So, as your mac is known, data sold, we assume your owned devices are well known.
Now we don't need anything else than a WLAN to track your GPS like location.. Beside.. This is how android WLAN location service works. Did I say android? Sorry, it is an exclusive google service.
You can:
Adapt your behavior .
Use tor or i2p.
Host your own services.
Encrypt everything.
And again, adapt your behavior... Elseway no onion routing brings any advantage.
So, if you are willing to go the painful road, opt out of most things.. You can't opt out of your phone providers data collection, if you still want a mobile phone.
But still... ANY data reduction is the right way.
The data is and will be more and more widely used, aggregated and abused.
It is time to realize that there won't be any freedom in the modern world - this IS the new world order.
Forgot one freedom: you are free to be a consumer and a product.
And for people arguing with laws... Laws can and will be changed... In the name of safety.
Sent from mobile.

Tracking Help with ISOLVED app

Last week my employer began using isolved time tracker for our work group. We began using it on 9-21-15. On 9-30-15, it was brought to my attention that my 'punches' were being logged from non-work locations. I believe there is a flaw or defect in the mobile software but I'll forward those questions to the software company. One thing I was able to find in my defense was the Google location log on my phone. I know that these items can be edited. I'm afraid that the edit factor may not allow this log to help my case but it does bring some other questions into play. Im hoping someone here with a higher level of knowledge in the field can educate me.
First question-
My location setting is always on and the location method is set to wifi and networks. I do NOT use the GPS option. How does my phone plot my locations? For example, it shows me at my home address at 6:53 am and then my work address at 7:27 am. I assume it's going off my home wifi connection and then my work wifi once I arrive and connect. I also notice it will show a time of 7:27-8:59 at my office, and once I arrive at another work location (and I would assume), connect to work wifi, the next location appears in my location log at that particular time. So, if Im at building B from 11:15 until 1:50, my location will show 'building B 11:15 am - 1:50 pm.' Not to sound redundant but, does the phone/location log know this because of the wifi connection?
What I am concerned most with is, all of my punch-ins for work are showing they were done from my home. I'm hoping to find a rock-solid way to orove that I was in fact at work when I was supposed to be. Would Sprint have any way of showing my locations at various times without me making any calls, sending any texts, or using any data? Do their towers have a constant lock on me and is there a log the can provide?
Thank you for reading through this long winded message. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I would greatly appreciate any help, advice, or ideas. Many, MANY, thanks in advance.
Mike~

hebejebe said:
Last week my employer began using isolved time tracker for our work group. We began using it on 9-21-15. On 9-30-15, it was brought to my attention that my 'punches' were being logged from non-work locations. I believe there is a flaw or defect in the mobile software but I'll forward those questions to the software company. One thing I was able to find in my defense was the Google location log on my phone. I know that these items can be edited. I'm afraid that the edit factor may not allow this log to help my case but it does bring some other questions into play. Im hoping someone here with a higher level of knowledge in the field can educate me.
First question-
My location setting is always on and the location method is set to wifi and networks. I do NOT use the GPS option. How does my phone plot my locations? For example, it shows me at my home address at 6:53 am and then my work address at 7:27 am. I assume it's going off my home wifi connection and then my work wifi once I arrive and connect. I also notice it will show a time of 7:27-8:59 at my office, and once I arrive at another work location (and I would assume), connect to work wifi, the next location appears in my location log at that particular time. So, if Im at building B from 11:15 until 1:50, my location will show 'building B 11:15 am - 1:50 pm.' Not to sound redundant but, does the phone/location log know this because of the wifi connection?
What I am concerned most with is, all of my punch-ins for work are showing they were done from my home. I'm hoping to find a rock-solid way to orove that I was in fact at work when I was supposed to be. Would Sprint have any way of showing my locations at various times without me making any calls, sending any texts, or using any data? Do their towers have a constant lock on me and is there a log the can provide?
Thank you for reading through this long winded message. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I would greatly appreciate any help, advice, or ideas. Many, MANY, thanks in advance.
Mike~
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you were on location and your device connected to your work WiFi, your IT/IS Department should have logs of that connection, they may need your MAC address to verify, but that should be proof enough.

seeking login info for comcast xb2 all-in-one, have physical access

long story short- we live in a big house, one of the guys is way behind on rent, the cable/internet is in his name. as one last "f*** you" to the rest of us while he's being evicted, he changed the wifi login to something the rest of us don't know (we've been splitting the cable bill among the 4 of us this whole time)
so the modem is a comcast/xfinity branded XB2 "all-in-one" modem/router made by Arris.
the default network name and password are printed on the outside of the modem.
also printed on the outside is the serial number (alphanumeric 15-character), a CM MAC, an E-MTA MAC, and a WAN MAC.
now of course I could just hold down the reset button for 30 seconds, use the default login, change it to something new, and take over the modem, but that only lasts as long as it takes him to call comcast and get them to override the modem/internet service.
I've got an old android that I've rooted just for this purpose. (I don't have access to a laptop or pc with a wifi adapter right now) I've tried using androdumper to brute force the wifi to no avail.
i think the best way to go about this is... hard reset the modem... log into the modem using default info... and then what? that's where i'm stumped. i'm pretty new at this (if you couldn't tell)
is there any info I can pull off of the comcast/arris modem screen (10.0.0.1 I believe is the address) that I can later use to pull the wifi password?
any android apps I can use to pull the wifi password?
Security is WPA
Before this guy changed the password, I looked at the security settings using 10.0.0.1 and they were set to "very lax" or whatever comcast calls it.
If you have any questions for me I'll try to answer them the best I can
Thank you in advance for all the help

Just hard reset it and change the password to something your crew agrees with..
I can't think of a worse punishment than to have anyone deal with customer service repeatedly.
Even more so if you can keep his hands off of it..

nutpants said:
Just hard reset it and change the password to something your crew agrees with..
I can't think of a worse punishment than to have anyone deal with customer service repeatedly.
Even more so if you can keep his hands off of it..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i hear ya, especially comcast customer service, but it's not really a solution. i've given this a lot of thought, i'd rather not go through all the hassle, but i've already gone to the trouble of rooting my phone and scouring the internet for android apps and wordlists and brute force solutions, all to no avail
if we "misplace" the modem that gives the guy an excuse to get the cops involved and trust me he'd love an excuse to call the cops and stir up even more s***

could anyone please recommend an app to crack the wifi?
or maybe a link to some instructions/things to try?
FYI the phone I have rooted is a samsung galaxy centura

Just hard reset the damn modem. it takes less than 5 minutes. Once you reset it, change the default password. Reset the wifi as the same SSID, and put in a new password.
What's going to happen is this: He'll reset the modem again, and do the exact same thing, again. your problem is this: the Comcast service agreement is in HIS name. He doesn't even have to get the cops involved. All he has to do is call Comcast and THEY will come after you for theft of service, and they do not back down easily. Give up while you're ahead.
Your best option is this - Call Comcast. tell them you evicted this person, and that he left an active cable internet account at your address. You would like to get new service installed to replace this account. They will work with you on this. I've had to do this a couple times before.