30 Minutes of Internet Access Costs Vacationing Family $13,470

I kept airplane mode on for my Note 5 while I traveled in Asia for a whole month few years ago. I could turn on/off wifi at my friends' homes and use public wifi. I never used any data from my wireless carrier and my bill and logs reflected that. IDK if android or ios updated things, but I suspect not. Airplane mode should be a killswitch for all wireless traffic. Something else happened here.

Also, international free data from T-Mo is 2G speed. That is SHIT SLOW. I can barely use email and forget it if there's a photo or file attachment. 1.8 GB on 2G would take FOREVER. And I seriously doubt cruising around in an airplane would be a stable enough connection wherever the phone was getting internet from. (even southwest free inflight wifi is hiccupy.)
 
MavericK said:
Airplane mode doesn't shut off all data? News to me...I thought that was kind of the point, to disable all wireless broadcasting.
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How nice. And you probably think your pseudonymised gmail is never reconnected to your identity by a 1000 different means.
Vader1975 said:
This story is incorrect. Airplane mode disables wifi and LTE and 3G etc. There are no transmissions of any kind. So he turned wifi off or something stupid and didn't understand how to actually activate "Air-Plane Mode" but you will lie through your teeth to avoid such a drastic bill so we all understand what happens next. Scared family makes a false claim about air-plane mode. News pics it up and runs with it without doing any due diligence. T-Mobile helps them out of idiocy.
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Possibly. My first smart phone was a discounted pay as you go phone, I used it as a media player and wi-fi only device. It kept trying to phone home over data to authenticate my phone. You had to turn off data seperately from Airplane mode to make that stop. On other phones, I used to have an app the would force off data when I had a wi-fi connection. It was a huge battery saver. The ability to do this was removed deliberately by Google. Your carrier wants all up into your business and they can do that best when you use data. They also want you to burn off data so you fork over more money. It's a feature for teh carrier. I'm sure some phones may include data as part of airplane mode. I know for a fact, some do not.
 
As somebody who runs a lot of iOS devices I can confirm that the average iPad will easily eat about 300MB an hour in advertisement downloads, I have even had to put up blocks on the network to keep them from coming in as they were collectively doing close to 5GB an hour in some of our larger locations. I have since implemented a better MDM solution and flat out ban add enabled apps on them because the bandwidth usage was too extreme and the add blocks only worked so well.
 
Yeah this is horseshit. Someone forgot to enable airplane mode, and then mommy and daddy got the bill. Nice of T-Mo to pick up the tab.

Airplane mode turns off everything.
 
Burticus said:
Yeah this is horseshit. Someone forgot to enable airplane mode, and then mommy and daddy got the bill. Nice of T-Mo to pick up the tab.

Airplane mode turns off everything.
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unless you turn it back on while airplane mode is enabled at some point, then when you re enable airplane mode at a later date it will remember that you had them on and leave them on. It was a change in iOS 11 but it is supposed to turn off the cellular and not let it be re enabled. Some apps however, if you launch them in airplane mode it will give you a clever popup about how it needs to show you advertisements to continue and if you click yes it will disable airplane mode and re enable the data connection for the app. Found out about that popup when I blocked the add sites from the network a crap load of "needed" apps refused to launch claiming they had no internet access.
 
Two scenarios could have happened in my mind:

1. He updated all of his apps/games/synced data before turning on airplane mode on the plane, before take off
2. If it did all happen while the plane was in the air, someone in Vietnam or somewhere he visited at some point sniffed his IMEI, saw it deauthed from the network, and used it for whatever purpose.

There is no way physical way mobile handoff worked in flight and maintained a data connection. Especially in Vietnam -- using T-Mobile Simple Global country plan, you are constantly getting pissed off at your signal levels. You get off a plane at Tan Son Naht, and you don't even have enough signal to check Google Voice in most of the terminals. I had to get a Viettel SIM while I was there to have any connection whatsoever in a lot of places.
 
griffinhart said:
Yeah, I call BS too. According to Apple, Airplane mode shuts down wireless communications to meet regulations: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204234

I also have never seen any app download 800+MB in the background. More likely the kid watched a movie at the airport or something.
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"More likely the kid watched a movie at the airport or something"
DING DING DING, we have a winner. I was also wondering how someone would be able to download a gig on T-Mo at 30k feet in a plane going 600+ mph. Their connections aren't that good even in major US cities. (as a T-Mo customer, I know how random their coverage is).
 
Vader1975 said:
This story is incorrect. Airplane mode disables wifi and LTE and 3G etc. There are no transmissions of any kind. So he turned wifi off or something stupid and didn't understand how to actually activate "Air-Plane Mode" but you will lie through your teeth to avoid such a drastic bill so we all understand what happens next. Scared family makes a false claim about air-plane mode. News pics it up and runs with it without doing any due diligence. T-Mobile helps them out of idiocy.
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Nah for one thing its not likely you can get data at the altitudes the jet was flying. Second 1gig in 30 minutes? How is a gig of data going to cost that much? T-mobile then offers to reduce it to $3800? sounds like billing shenanigans .
 
Farkle said:
Two scenarios could have happened in my mind:

1. He updated all of his apps/games/synced data before turning on airplane mode on the plane, before take off
2. If it did all happen while the plane was in the air, someone in Vietnam or somewhere he visited at some point sniffed his IMEI, saw it deauthed from the network, and used it for whatever purpose.

There is no way physical way mobile handoff worked in flight and maintained a data connection. Especially in Vietnam -- using T-Mobile Simple Global country plan, you are constantly getting pissed off at your signal levels. You get off a plane at Tan Son Naht, and you don't even have enough signal to check Google Voice in most of the terminals. I had to get a Viettel SIM while I was there to have any connection whatsoever in a lot of places.
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I try not to sniff other peoples IMEIs. :D
 
4884 said:
I call bullshit.
First of all, airplane mode does shut off mobile data. Not even Apple can screw this up.
Secondly, mobile data while roaming is unlikely to be on by default. I don't use an iphone or t-mobile I don't know. But it should not be on without the user's consent.
And 1.1 GB is not going to be background data. Not even an OS version update will be this big.
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How could a game use 1.1 GB in 30 minutes?

I have the t-mobile 2GB plan, and I usually don't even hit 1GB during the month, even though I spend a few hours a month playing games (games that require an internet connection) when I'm not on WiFi.
 
Dregan73 said:
really doesn't mater what the kid did, 1 gb of data should never cost 13k in the first place, thats just absurd
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Cost boils down to the country you are in. If your provider doesn't have a contract with the carriers in that country, the costs get insane. I read an article about a UK citizen racking up $13 per Megabyte of data in South Africa. Developing nations are notorious for this. Honestly, they just didn't do their due diligence before leaving on the trip, or didn't police their kid well enough to prevent the use. Yes, it's insane but it's not T-Mobile's fault here and it's certainly not because of a chess games background downloads while in "Airplane mode." It was a deliberate use of data in a place where they may not have understood the situation.
 
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Whatever the excuse is 13 grand for 1.1GB’s should be illegal. Even a celebrity would flip their shit over this despite being rich.
 
Holy airplane Mode-us Operandi Batman, to the tune of 13,000 big ones. Jeez Louize. I know this wasn't funny to the family dad but for some strange reason, this story IS funny as fck. Not going to be funny if it happens to me though.
 
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MavericK said:
Airplane mode doesn't shut off all data? News to me...I thought that was kind of the point, to disable all wireless broadcasting.
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Maybe there is some substance to the wild theories of the early 2000s where people claimed that even a turned off phone sends data and listens to conversations.
 
nutzo said:
How could a game use 1.1 GB in 30 minutes?

I have the t-mobile 2GB plan, and I usually don't even hit 1GB during the month, even though I spend a few hours a month playing games (games that require an internet connection) when I'm not on WiFi.
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That's exactly why I think the kid (or the family) was making things up.
Chess game and background process my ass.
He could be downloading new games (many large mobile games require additional data pack over 1GB) or torrenting porn, who knows?
 
The sorry isn't incorrect. What's incorrect is the summary on HardOCP. The article says nothing about airplane mode not disabling data (in fact, it says it does). What it does say is apps that don't require data to work still use it in the background sometimes such as to deliver ads, which is likely what happened here. Aldo, the thirty minute estimate is a guess from the mother - and just a guess. Which the article also states. There's no evidence to back any of this story up, and yet T-Mobile still threw out the bill.

And another thing - if the family was so diligent about international data usage, why did they have roaming turned on in their phone settings? It would have had to be on for this all to have happened (even without Airplane Mode), and that's not a setting that's enabled by default on either Android or iOS.

It's all fishy.
 
J3RK said:
I think they just opened a new internet mine in Siberia, but it's kind of hard getting it out of there with all the sanctions. Plus, that's unrefined internet. Then it has to be refined. That costs some major money. I think it also gives off asbestos as a byproduct.
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Yes, that's true but i wont touch a gram of those internets because they use child labor to support the guerrilla war there. Say no to "blood internets" folks.
 
MavericK said:
Airplane mode doesn't shut off all data? News to me...I thought that was kind of the point, to disable all wireless broadcasting.
Click to expand...

Yup, this article smells of bullshit. Something tells me this was on-land and they were using roaming data to rack up that much of a bill.

There is no way in fuckville that I will believe for one second that they used ANY bandwidth in airplane mode - let alone THAT MUCH when you're ACROSS A FUCKING OCEAN. Last I checked, they don't build cell-towers on the ocean you retards.
 
I think the worse part about this is that cageymaru just repeated what the article said. This is a tech news site and they just go along with the article stating airplane mode doesn't actually display LTE/WIFI? I'd expect more from someone who posts news on HardOCP.
 
Airplane mode on my Moto X Pure turns off cellular as well. I thought this was pretty standard.
 
Skimmed thru the article and at the end it mentions how Android will let you restrict data usage per app. That reminded me that Android has had ability to tell you the data usage per app for a very long time now. Strange how no mention of the kids supposed Chess experience showed that. I'd bet bottom dollar if they checked VLC, Moviesanywhere, VUDU, etc. they'd seen a different story. I call bs all over their claims in this. The only truth would be ignorance in their accountability for monitoring the kid. Annual trips to Vietnam, at some point they would've learned about these kinds of rates.
 
1. it wasn't on airplane mode
2. your phone won't work while flying "over" anything. Only briefly during takeoff, and in the 5 minutes before you land


This story is bullshit. Little turd downloaded some loot boxes and lied about it.
 
lol, cell towers project their signals to the horizon, not vertical. As a pilot, I can't get a signal at all above 4000-5000 ft AGL. I know, I try all the time.

Fake news.
 
Vega said:
lol, cell towers project their signals to the horizon, not vertical. As a pilot, I can't get a signal at all above 4000-5000 ft AGL. I know, I try all the time.

Fake news.
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Plus, you're inside a giant tin can.
 
Yeah whether or not he's bullshitting about the whole "Chess" thing (1GB for 30 minutes of chess? riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight) is irrelevant, the issue is that Verizon (and others) are charging these fees of this level. I mean seriously WTF rational can they make other than "it makes us huge bags of money" that a GB of data costs them anywhere near, 3 orders of magnitude, $13,000?

Reminds me of the long distance scam that kept permeating the landlines, anyone remember when you could call free but only if it was like in a 15 mile (or some similar small) radius, outside that cost money even if it was the same area code? Then if you wanted to call long distance, like literally EVER, you needed to subscribe to a long distance carrier even though the TelCo was owned by said carriers and you paid a monthly fee regardless of if you made any calls or not... oh and they charged you for the long distance time too. Then everyone got sell phones and the concept of long distance just disappeared, hurray! However country borders and data are the new long distance charge scam.
 
im a T-Mobile subscriber. I've owned a s6, s7 and now and s9. I fly to Europe or Asia and back once every 2 months. I'm a bad boy and never turn airplane mode on. I play offline games on my phone when I'm awake.

When I take off, after just a few minutes of taking off I have 0 service and 0 wifi signal. upon a few minutes of descent for landing it will grab a signal and I immediately check messages, check weather etc.

my bill has NEVER went over my monthly fee.
 
Kids lying. News and parents know jack shit.

Tmobile being secretive. Airplane mode wtf?
 
Vega said:
lol, cell towers project their signals to the horizon, not vertical. As a pilot, I can't get a signal at all above 4000-5000 ft AGL. I know, I try all the time.

Fake news.
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Funny Ive gotten signal at 10k feet on the eastern shore of MD....now when I am at 2k feet over the plains of colorado or kansas I cant get shit for signal. All depends on where you live man. Also you know you arent supposed to be using your cell phone while in flight right? ;)

That being said...this story is bullshit. Airplane mode disables most of the antennas. For at least Apple phones starting with IOS 8 something they leave the GPS antenna on. I believe it leas NFC antennas on as well.

It does turn off the cell, bt, and wifi SEND/RECV functionality.

So yeah they were bullshitting.
 
Next, they're going to tell us that turning OFF your phone doesn't actually turn it off.....
 
These phones, and the service providers which enable them and the app producers and the OS producers (Google, I'm looking at you) are totally opaque to the average user.

If I don't want the microphone on, NOTHING should be listened to.
If I don't want the location on, NOTHING should be tracked.
If I don't want wifi, NOTHING should be emitted/received.
If I don't want camera, NOTHING should be videoed.

Yet, despite the icons for the above NOT being shown, all of them are working in the background.

WTF?

I'm ready to sign on for a class action lawsuit. Someone Better Call Saul. I'm in.
 
I have never had DATA work in airplane mode.

And I have NEVER gotten data while at altitude when it's on. MAYBE on approach and then not sustained. What magic phone allows you to pull a fucking GIG at 35,000 feet off a cellular network?
 
Using DATA offered by the AIRCRAFT is what costs so much when you're in international airspace. The aircraft use satellite broadband and assess fees to the carriers for forwarding their data to their subscribers. So, watching Netflix over the Pacific will cost an arm and a leg.

Nowhere does the story state that the family linked to terrestrial cell phone towers.
 
Vader1975 said:
This story is incorrect. Airplane mode disables wifi and LTE and 3G etc. There are no transmissions of any kind. So he turned wifi off or something stupid and didn't understand how to actually activate "Air-Plane Mode" but you will lie through your teeth to avoid such a drastic bill so we all understand what happens next. Scared family makes a false claim about air-plane mode. News pics it up and runs with it without doing any due diligence. T-Mobile helps them out of idiocy.
Click to expand...

Airplane mode does not disable wifi.
 
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