Think Twice Before You Let Smartphones And Tablets Tether

I'm quite surprised that pretty much the entire industry these days thinks that Wi-Fi Internet connectivity means that there is free, unlimited and ultra-fast connectivity. As a consequence many smartphones and tables are shamelessly downloading operating system updates and other things small and large without asking the user first.

A 150 MB Android update available!? No problem, there's Wi-Fi so it's downloaded by many devices without asking the user first. Now imagine you are hanging off a hotel Wi-Fi that is slow already or even paid by the megabyte. The former is still the norm rather than the exception while the later is rare these days but it still exists, which is why I would never stay in NH hotels if I can avoid it…

Even worse, you ask a friend in a café if you could tether your Wi-Fi only tablet over his phone to the Internet. He graciously agrees despite only having a contract that includes a few hundred megabytes of data a month. After all, a couple of web pages won't hurt!? Well, these probably won't but the 150 MB OS update starting automatically will. And unless you friend keeps his data counter in sight he probably never knows what hit him until a couple of days later when he hits his monthly data cap.

Therefore, think twice before you open your mobile network connectivity for anyone…

Fortunately CyanogenMod on my Samsung Galaxy S4 gives me root access so I've put the domain name of the update server in the hosts file and point it to localhost. This stops the madness and restores sanity so I will not be surprised by a bulk data download while I'm tethering or staying in a hotel.