How to bypass "tethering block" on Three network?

Well, you could always pay for tethering, because chances are that "truly unlimited" data is only meant for your handset.

 

Three block tethering now?

Does anyone know how long this has been going on?

They didn't used to when I was with them up until around this time last year, It came in handy when I moved flat and it took me about a month to get a landline internet connection.

 

Three UK... AFAIK yes they do.

Does anyone know how long this has been going on?

There was a post on here a few months ago about someone getting a Three tethering block warning notice, because they where not using the stock browser on their phone.

I would guess they're detecting the Browser User Agent string. e.g.:-
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.168 Safari/535.19 It's rather obvious that it's running on a PC and not a phone.

 

Exactly, it's not hard to packet sniff headers and see where the traffic is coming from.

 

Does anyone know if a sim with this restriction will work in a mifi for a connected *phone*

Thinking of doing this for "data overflow" since I use vodafone (as they have coverage) but if I hit my data limit when travelling it would be handy to access the

 

Do you mean putting a Three mobile SIM into a MiFi dongle?

If you do that, they will shut the SIM off and you won't be able to use it at all. They don't allow SIMs that are for mobiles to go into anything else.

 

Hey guys, it took me 3 days to figure out how to bypass the three tether block... I tried everything... VPN only tether seemed to have worked but I got banned straight away... Three and any other ISP get only ur user agent info, so if u go to whatsmyuseragent.com u will see what three or any other ISP see, so when u tether iPad or anything else the user agent is seen as iPad or etc... U can use user agent fakers but they still see that you have tethered... The way I found around this is to download a user agent faker on ur iPad or etc ( from Cadia) and then on ur mobile from which ur tethering go to the whatsmyuseragent.com and copy the user agent u see, then on your iPad create a custom user agent (user agent faker allows u to select iPhone user agent mozila, safari and etc but also has a custom setting) in the custom setting paste the copied user agent from iPhone to ur iPad.. And it shud work... Now every time u tether the ISP will see that u have apparently connected using ur standard registered iPhone or etc (but really it's ur iPad).... Essentially this is user agent duplication. Enjoy, hopefully will work for u guys

 

i just keep my usage low on tethering... so i fly under the radar...
10gb is a little high

 

Did this work? My girlfriend just bought a cable to view her phone on the TV, but each time she connected the cable, the internet would lose its signal.

After calling 3, they want her to pay an extra fiver a month to view her phone on the larger TV screen!!!

This is disgraceful and a breach of privacy by viewing what you are doing with your own phone. We are considering complaining to Watchdog and Ofcom about this, but in the meantime we would like to know if we can bypass this.

The cable we are using is a HDMI phone to TV cable, so we arent even tethering as they call it to a laptop.

Also, even though "all you can eat data" is capped at 1000gigs a month, if you do pay the extra 5 pounds a month, you can only use 1 GIG per month streaming to your tv, wow great so for a fiver you get to watch one film!!!

 

You might want to read Three's terms & conditions:

13.6 Use of

 

We are not terrorists!
We just expect a bit of privacy and not to be ripped off.

People put personal details online that should be private. credit card details photos, they have no right to snoop. Even if it is in their TOS, its shocking

Aside from that everyone you speak to on the phone lives in bloody Calcutta India and they are very hard to understand them.

They have blocked her account from going online for 72 hours, just for plugging in a cable to her tv to view her photos and refuse to remove it before those 72 hours, complete jokers

Regardless, I didnt post to argue their TOS, I wanted to know if there is a way to bypass their snooping, so we can connect our TV to the phone please

 

When you are actually putting real personal data on-line, like credit card details, that is private and is secured with SSL. Three can't see that. But on other other hand if you're uploading photos to Facebook for the whole world to see or something, that's hardly private at all anyway. With any on-line services, it all depends if they're using secure encryption or not.

TBH Three tends to be cheap carrier and will try to reduce running costs in anyway they can, that's why I used them for a while. AFAIK Vodafone and O2 have their calls centres in the UK, but I found they tended to charge much more for basic service. Three has these various things to try and increase their profits, like gouging you if you want to plug your TV in.

You're lucky anyway, when I speak to anyone at my current carrier, they're always in China and don't speak English at all.

You could try a secure VPN to bypass their deep packet inspection systems. That will give you total privacy as well. Thing is all ISPs can see and do log what you're doing on-line, unless you take steps to ensure privacy, like using a VPN.

 

That's not even tethering though. I'm confused, three are actually stopping you use the functions on your phone.

 

Why not get a contract that allows tethering?

 

Does anyone know if it's possible to get your Android phone to take any internet traffic going through it and rewrite the User Agent to the one stored in the phone, then you can tether on anyones computer without having to install any addons etc or go to whatsmyuseragent.com to check your phones user agent?

 

I was hoping that some one would be able to tell me how to overcome this tethering block that 3 has put on my S2. I was able to tether my netbook while on the train etc. Not very often then last month I try and have a block. They want me to upgrade my contract. No thank you I do not use it that often.And yes I am trying to save a little cash. And yes I did not know that I was restricted. I had all I could download allowance. Anyone got a simple way. Anybody bright enough to get one over on 3?

 

Could try using a secure VPN. Everything is encrypted and Three can't do deep packet inspections on your data.

Something like: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0 tells Three that your tethering.

Probably can't do anything with the phone itself to spoof what's going through it. Try running Android on the laptop, Android-X86?

 

So, does this mean that if someone is using an android phone and is tethering, say, a nexus 7 to it wirelessly, 3 can't work out that tethering is being done? Also,what oif the phone and the tablet use the same browser - say Dolphin or Chrome (the last specifically in the case of JB)?

 

I recently upgraded my contract to include unlimited data. BANG - can't use tethering anymore. Gits. I don't use tethering a lot (maybe 200MB a month), but it is very handy for work when I just really need that web connection on my laptop.

This block is ridiculous, I UPGRADE my plan and LOOSE a service! WTF! So what's the difference between mobile data and tethering data - NOTHING. Don't call it unlimited data if it's not unlimited.

Anyway, rant over. I have a solution:

We're going to install a WiFi hotspot app (FoxFi) on the mobile, that routes traffic through a proxy. This will help with non-http data traffic. Then we are going to set the PC web browser to look like a mobile browser, because Three use the browser agent signature to detect non-mobile browsers and then turn on the block.

1. Open up your phone's web browser and visit whatsmyuseragent.com
2. Copy the reported user agent string and email it to yourself
3. On your PC, start the chrome browser and install the "User Agent Switcher" add-on.
4. Turn on the user agent switcher (top right icon).
5. Paste in your phone's user agent string that you emailed to yourself.
6. Click on "Change". Your PC Chrome browser now looks like a mobile!
7. On your mobile, go to the Android store and install FoxFi.
8. Also install the FoxFi add on.
9. Start FoxFi, goto settings and "Enable Proxy" (this is the add-on bit).
10. Connect your PC to the FoxFi WiFi hotspot.

I find this works fine and no reduction in speed. However, it does have the annoying side effect that every web page you visit thinks you're on a mobile phone and makes everything really big.

 

For T-mobile, I use the User Agent Switcher plugin and change it to Chrome 18.6.872.0 (Win 7) on my laptop browser. For some reason, some older Chrome versions don't redirect to the tethering upsell. This gives me the best useability on my browser. Before I found that Chrome 18.6.872.0 (Win 7) worked, I changed my user agent to one of the search robots. That worked, but sometimes confused websites badly enough to where they weren't fully functional. So far, I can't use use PayPal at all unless I'm telling the truth.

 

3 UK. been there done that.

It's unlimited if you're just using it on your phone, with the default browser. Change your browser and 3 will accuse you of tethering.

That should work, you're basically spoofing the browser User Agent String, to be the same as the default one. The evidence so far would indicate that 3 UK uses deep packet inspection to detect tethering.

 

Of course, the problem here is people like the OP who use 10GB while tethering. That really is taking the ****.