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How does AT&T know I got an Iphone?

I

i8hotdogs

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 9, 2008
14
0
Hello - I have been a AT&T customer for for over 10 years. I have swapped out countless phones with my SIM card to new upgraded phones. I just noticed when I checked my online account, it shows that I have an Iphone, so I cannot make any changes to my account. I am required to call AT&T to make any changes to my account. I changed the model on the website to my old phone, but it keeps updating back to the IPhone.

Before, my online account would show my original phone that I had with my account. Now, it shows that I got an IPhone even though I did not go through AT&T to upgrade my hardware. Does the IPhone send out outbound traffic to AT&T?

It's no big deal that they know because I have a active account. I just never experienced this before after many hardware changes.
 
Anything you do goes through AT&T, call-wise.

Even if you don't send or receive calls or messages, your phone attempts to connect to AT&T towers whenever an AT&T SIM is in. When it connects to a tower, your IMEI is sent with your AT&T info. Your IMEI is part of your phone and only your phone, so AT&T knows what it is.

It's that simple. I haven't heard of anyone getting disconnected because of it yet though (knock on wood). I have the same situation.
 
I just have to ask.. Why would you want to hide the fact you have a iPhone from at&t?

ahh, your edit didnt show until after I posted.
 
I would speculate visual voicemail is an iPhone-AT&T exclusive feature so that may play a role. That and the voice plan is different from non-iPhone pricing.
 
Thanks for the reply. It's just weird that my hardware profile never updated on my online account, but now it does with an IPhone. I guess it could be that I never noticed too.

Thanks
 
There is nothing to hide. I just never expected my online account to update with the new hardware since I don't ever remember it doing this.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

You activated it in itunes right...
 
I wonder what, if anything, they are doing if you have an iphone that is unlocked and you don't have the "iphone plan". I used my iphone when I first got it with my cingular sim for a while, but when I noticed on the webpage that they knew I was using an iphone, I switched the SIM back to my other phone. (the web page eventually updated to indicate the correct phone)

Anybody have any "issues" with using a non-activated iphone with AT&T?
 
Click the "Not your device?" or whatever beneath the iPhone and change it to what you want AT&T to think you have. They find out you have it because of the IMEI... You could try using ZiPhone to change the IMEI to the IMEI of your other phone but I don't know how that would affect the iPhone.
 
If you activated the phone via iTunes, AT&T is notified that you have the phone and adjusts you account accordingly.
 
As already noted, every call made on your mobile is logged by your network and part of the information recorded is the IMEI number of your phone. The first 8 digits of this number contains codes showing who manufactured the phone and its type (ie its an Apple iPhone). Also logged is the sim cards phone number and from this info AT&T know you are using an unregistered iphone on your account.
 
kbonnel said:
I wonder what, if anything, they are doing if you have an iphone that is unlocked and you don't have the "iphone plan". I used my iphone when I first got it with my cingular sim for a while, but when I noticed on the webpage that they knew I was using an iphone, I switched the SIM back to my other phone. (the web page eventually updated to indicate the correct phone)

Anybody have any "issues" with using a non-activated iphone with AT&T?
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it. The 2 main reasons people who have ATT and hack the iPhone is because:
1. They do not wan to extend their contract for 2 years.
2. They want to maintain their corp. discounts.

ATT is not going to call you and tell you to go on the iPhone plan vs. the media net (max plans) because att does not lose money.

Apple is greedy. They might care if people are not on official iPhone plans because they get a cut of the subscription plans.

So the amount of "non-official" iPhone users on ATT's network is so small right now that Apple just does not worry about it.
 
kbonnel said:
I wonder what, if anything, they are doing if you have an iphone that is unlocked and you don't have the "iphone plan". I used my iphone when I first got it with my cingular sim for a while, but when I noticed on the webpage that they knew I was using an iphone, I switched the SIM back to my other phone. (the web page eventually updated to indicate the correct phone)

Anybody have any "issues" with using a non-activated iphone with AT&T?
Click to expand...

i know this is old but i have to say i do have an iphone 2g and they have been trying to add a data plan but i guess i have to personally give them the IMEI number so they havent added it and i never answer the phone when they calls
 
trust me

anytime you pop your sims in a phone it will show up try popping your sims in your friends what ever make a call shortly after AT&T will show that make model. I changed 4-5 models last year AT&T knew everyone
 
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