iPhone Charges (15 cents per message)

by **Kahil** on Sun Sep 30, 2007 7:28 pm

hrmmm... It sounds like when you go to meebo using the iphone, they recognize that you are visiting via the iphone. They can probably also see those "pings" when you send/receive messages. That would be my best guess as to how then know. We all know how Apple really likes that you use only their products, their iPhone apps and not any third party apps. By their reasoning, they prolly consider meebo a third party app of some sort...despite it being a web app...

by **Jake_Watkins** on Sun Sep 30, 2007 9:03 pm

This probably means they will shut the iPod Touch's capabilities to go to meebo, seeing how they do not have bills.

by **chbimun** on Tue Oct 02, 2007 10:09 pm

I'm able to use meebo on the iTouch just fine. Of course I didn't upgrade the firmware so it's still at factory setting.

by **zerock** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:20 pm

this is a first... how do you know they are charging you for those messages?

by **haargerman** on Wed Oct 10, 2007 1:12 am

Hmm..

Im gonna go check my bill now.

BTW - Have you "modded" your iPhone?

by **haargerman** on Wed Oct 10, 2007 1:22 am

Also, who does it say those messages are being sent to?

by **damien** on Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:34 pm

To answer the questions above:

a) I have not modded my iPhone.

b) On my bill I got charged for Instant Messages and I have no IM client on my phone. This was the source of my investigation. I have concluded after talking to AT&T that they must be detecting my meebo.com IMs and charging me for them since that's the only instant messaging I have done from my phone. I don't have the detailed bill that shows who each message went to.

by **haargerman** on Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:17 pm

So their screen names show up on their bill?

I dont understand how they can get away with this.

EDIT - I've sent a few messages thru meebo and I've been checking my bill but AT&T has not charged me those as text messages.

by **ahoier** on Wed Oct 17, 2007 2:26 pm

I'm not a mobile user...at all, but there's a number of possibilities...you may want to try using a secure connection to meebo.com. It's been a while since I used mebeo, but a couple servers did allow

Code: Select all: https://classic.meebo.com/

or something like that? Since the messages are being sent in plain text, it's possible ATT/iphone can detect these as "IMs". When using an HTTPS connection, the connection between your phone and meebo would be encrypted, so these messages shouldn't be read by 3rd parties, unless of course meebo is teaming with ATT to gather this data (highly unlikely, IMHO).

Other than that, perhaps ATT is tracking the "DNS requests" of meebo.com; is it possible to change the IPHONE DNS servers? If so, try changing the DNS addresses to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220, which is a total 3rd party DNS, provided by OpenDNS, ATT should then not be able to track even your DNS requests.

From http://andrewescobar.com/archive/2007/0 ... -internet/ - the following process is:

If your iPhone is having trouble connecting to the Internet using your home or office Wi-Fi wireless router, the solution may be to change the iPhone’s DNS settings.

Quickly Fix DNS Settings on the iPhone
Go to Settings.
Select Wi-Fi.
Chose a network.
Select the blue arrow next to the network you are connected to.
Select DNS.
Change the IP Address to 208.67.222.222

That might help too...otherwise just wait for a mod/dev to answer further :)

Also, do you have access to wireless.att.com? You should, if you are an ATT customer; you can view your detailed bill there, from my sister's experience, it seems to get updated atleast every 5 hours - maybe a little longer for "data" usage though, but check that out. Though, she doesn't use meebo, she just uses SMS/text messaging, in which it shows the number she texts, or the number of the person that texted her and such. But try that.

by **Weakoz** on Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:57 pm

The dev team is going to investigate this for you all.

xXOZXx

by **ahoier** on Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:44 am

Meebo needs encryption.... :roll: just like BitTorrent users required encryption to download Linux Distros 8)

by **cookedwords** on Fri Oct 26, 2007 5:20 pm

haargerman wrote:So their screen names show up on their bill?

I dont understand how they can get away with this.

EDIT - I've sent a few messages thru meebo and I've been checking my bill but AT&T has not charged me those as text messages.

I'd like to second that. I have also reviewed my bill for the past couple of months and do not see a single charge for using meebo on Safari. My plan does include 1500 text messages a month. However, my meebo usage on the iPhone far exceeds that number.

Damien- Does your ATT plan include text messaging? If so, how many per month? When you pass your text message monthly limit, I believe it's $0.15/text message. So you might be getting dinged via text message, not thru meebo.

by **meebomark** on Mon Oct 29, 2007 2:45 am

meebo is just another website on your iPhone. We don't use SMS and we don't have any deals with AT&T or Apple. If you have a phone plan with unlimited Internet access then there should be no additional charge to use meebo on your iPhone.

by **madrox** on Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:35 pm

if you want encryption for p2p use PeerGuardian. Maybe it will work for the iPhone too?

On a side note GAWD I'm glad I didn't waste money on that thing. There are at least a half dozen people in my office that bought them and every single person has buyers remorse. And now to find out they may be charging for IM's like that... more reason to not give Apple my $.

by **detard** on Wed Oct 31, 2007 6:32 pm

damien, please excuse my being skeptical, but until we know for sure that this is not charges for SMS messages and is indeed Meebo messages, I'm going to have to call FUD on this.