Thanks to a piece found on Mobilissimo.ro we uncovered some interesting facts concerning the mobile hotspot feature on Android and possibly iOS 4.3 as well. Turns out that it’s fairly easy to connect to someone’s handset and use it as a mobile hotspot, especially if the user relies on the default username and password.
If we’re talking about a laptop that supports phone tethering, well this portable device can remember the user and password, while the Internet-providing phone will remember its MAC address, but only if you set it up that way. The vulnerability of mobile hotspots is great and since connection speeds have increased, you can achieve a huge bill in no time.
No info if the iPhone with iOS 4.3 poses the same threat, so if you tried it, feel free to leave a comment below. In the meantime, you have to know what can happen if you abuse your data contract, as we found in the same article mentioned above. The news piece mentions the case of an Orange Romania customer who had to pay 8000 euros for one month of data usage. This is one of the highest bills in the region and it’s the equivalent of using the priciest Orange contract (155 euros per month) and downloading 700MB of data in Serbia, using roaming services.
In Serbia, the price for 1MB of download is 9 euros. Adding it all up, the bill would reach 8000 euros, so to avoid such problems, you’d better watch your mobile hotspot password and user name…
