PaulDotCom mailing list archives
Re: attwifi ssid
From: Marshal Graham <marshal.graham () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:57:38 -0600
Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I think we have confirmed what I already suspected, a large number (but not all) of AT&T smartphones blindly connect to any AP broadcasting a attwifi ssid. There also may not always be an obvious way to disable this behavior. I've attached a screenshot (does this list allow attachments?) from my Motorola Atrix (android) phone. There are two things worth noticing. First, there is an option called Auto-connect and the description is "Automatically connect to an available AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot." It's possible that not all AT&T Androids have this option. Second, the little globe icon in the upper left corner. That only appears when I'm connected to an attwifi ssid. It is supposed to be an indication that this is an AT&T hotspot. In this case, I am using a rouge AT&T hotspot but I still get the globe icon. I'm still not sure exactly how wide spread this issue is but it is definitely exhibited by a large number of AT&T devices from multiple vendors. For those that still doubt this, just stand up an AP with an ssid of attwifi in a crowded location (and then prepare to exceed your bandwidth caps). Marshal On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 9:14 AM, James Philput <jamesphilput () gmail com> wrote:
In order to confirm what I remember, and what others have said about the auto-connect function, I decided to test it with an iPad 1 from my lab at work. I can confirm that this device has never before been used to connect to the attwifi SSID. I went to the local Starbucks, and turned on wifi. The iPad immediately connected to the attwifi SSID. It did not ask as it does with unknown networks, it just connected. I checked the settings for that network, and just as I'd seen on my phone, there was no "Forget this network" button, as there is for other iDevices. Instead there was an on/off slider labeled "Auto-Join". James On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Marshal Graham <marshal.graham () gmail com> wrote:I'm positive that I did not have to initiate the first connection to attwifi. The first time I noticed it was in a McDonald's and I noticed it later at a Sam's Club. I have never "told" my phone to connect to attwifi, it does this automatically. This is pretty well confirmed judging by the number of devices that blindly connect to attwifi and the presence of an Android option to "Automatically connect to an available AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot." Marshal On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Chris Frederick <cdf123 () cdf123 net> wrote:I have heard of this behavior on the iPhone, and from what I know, if you connect to any wifi the phone will remember the ssid and the mac, if it sees these in the future it will auto connect. But attwifi is different in that it doesn't check the mac, only the ssid is needed. I have seen that if you do _not_ connect to any attwifi, it won't auto connect, you need to initiate the initial connection to one. I would assume that if you tell the phone to delete the connection while it's in range, it will stop auto-connecting. I have a 3GS and a 4S and have tested this a bit. I've never connected my 4S to attwifi, and it's never auto-connected, but I did on the 3GS but I reset the phone before I was in range of a different attwifi spot. Chris On 01/11/12 12:54, Marshal Graham wrote:Here is an issue I just recently became aware of. I did a little research and was not able to discover much related to this. If it's already been discussed, I'll apologize in advance. AT&T smartphones will automatically connect to a ssid of attwifi. Several people have verified this by simply setting a ssid of attwifi with no encryption. We have seen iPhone 4, Android, and Blackberry devices from AT&T connect this way. It was also reported that AT&T 3G iPad/iPad2 devices do this as well. On the Motorola Atrix, the AT&T logo appear to indicate you are connected to an AT&T hot spot. iPhone 3GS does not appear to exhibit this behavior. At least some Android devices do have an option to disable this behavior through the settings menu. Aside from disabling wifi, I cannot find this option on iPhone or Blackberry. To be clear, this is AT&T specific. A little Google searching revealed this from May 2011, http://gobitech.blogspot.com/2011/05/i-recently-decided-to-conduct-little.html, but not much else. Either this is not as much of an issue as I think it might be or it has just been ignored. It would seem to fall into the same category as using a ssid of linksys or Free Public WiFi. This could be a little worse since at least some devices give you an indication you are connecting to a real AT&T hotspot. Anyone have thoughts about this? To make sure I give proper attribution, this was originally pointed out to me by Mark Rupright. Marshal _______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom () mail pauldotcom com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom () mail pauldotcom com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom () mail pauldotcom com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom () mail pauldotcom com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com
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Current thread:
- Re: attwifi ssid, (continued)
- Re: attwifi ssid James Philput (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Bruce Barnett (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Marshal Graham (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Joshua Wright (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Marshal Graham (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Chris Frederick (Jan 11)
- Re: attwifi ssid Marshal Graham (Jan 12)
- Re: attwifi ssid Kevin Shaw (Jan 12)
- Re: attwifi ssid Chris Frederick (Jan 13)
- Re: attwifi ssid James Philput (Jan 13)
- Re: attwifi ssid James Philput (Jan 13)
- Re: attwifi ssid Marshal Graham (Jan 13)
- Re: attwifi ssid Marshal Graham (Jan 12)