iOS Hotspot Issue Could Cost You!

We noticed in the last few months extra charges on our cellular bills-- more than $200!-- for excessive data usage. In looking into the cause, we found that it was because we had apparently overused our data plan by leaving our iPhone Personal Hotspots on. Or so we thought.

The first time it happened we paid the bill and said, "Shame on us. Everybody remember to turn your Personal Hotspot off when it's not needed." Then it happened again. To me! And I've been very intentional about only turning that feature on when I need it, and turning it off when I don't.

Here's what I've learned: if you have devices that have the same AppleID as your iPhone, they can turn the Personal Hotspot on without you even knowing it! This is true for iPads, Macs, and more!

Imagine the scenario:

You're walking through a park where there's no public WiFi. Your iPhone is in your pocket, and you're carrying your WiFi-only iPad. Because the iPad can't find a WiFi to connect to, it automatically tries to connect to your iPhone, turning on the Personal Hotspot without you even knowing it! And it does not turn off the hotspot when it's done. And that's where the potential data overuse fees can kick in.

Talking with Apple engineering, these are currently the only ways to prevent that from happening; do one of the following:

1. Turn off Bluetooth on your devices (other than the iPhone) and WiFi on your Macs, or
2. Sign out of iCloud on your devices and Macs, or
3. Have your devices and Macs forget the network password for your iPhone hotspot.

The problems with those are, respectively:

1.  If you use Bluetooth on your devices (like your iPad), you will need to manually turn it on to do so and then must remember to turn it off when done. But what if you forget to turn off your iPad's Bluetooth?
2. If your devices get lost or stolen you won't be able to use 'Find My Device'.
3. If you use a strong password for your hotspot, remembering and entering the password is cumbersome at best.

What Apple agreed was that the best solution would be to add a control to iPhone iOS where the default setting would be to not allow other devices to automatically turn on the hotspot, but allow the user to change that if desired. If the user changes that setting, the liability for cost would be on the consumer.

What started out as a great idea by Apple needs just a little tweaking-- hopefully soon-- to make it truly good. If I were an attorney and discovered this issue, I would be seeing dollar signs and think class action lawsuit, which only the attorneys really benefit from.

New Article on Improving IT Support

True confession: My greatest IT challenge is not keeping up with technology! It's not budgeting the next upgrade! It is keeping my tone as warm and human as possible. And I think I may have a lot of company, so I wrote an article about it! Here's the link: http://www.mbsinc.com/keep-personal/.


I hope you find it helpful!

New Article RE: Mandated Credit Card Terminal Updates

On October 14, 2014 President Obama signed an executive order "encouraging" faster adoption of the EMV standard for credit and debit cards in the U.S. It requires updating transaction terminals, and has some potentially stiff fines for non-compliance!

Here's a link to a brief article I write about it: http://www.mbsinc.com/are-your-creditdebit-card-readers-putting-you-at-risk/