How a Guy Tricked Apple With a Disguised iPhone Tethering App [IPhone]

Oh, Nick Lee, you clever clever man. You notice, Nick here tricked Apple with a very easy iPhone application: Handy Light. On the skin it gave the impression of any other $0.99 flashlight application. But, secretly, it was so much more useful.

On the outside, Handy Light just allowed you to make your iPhone\’s screen go blank with a color of your choice. You opened it, clicked a swatch from an effortless palette, and that was it: Life in technicolor. Another stupid flashlight application, like a hundred others. Or so the folks who test applications at Apple\’s App Store thought.

Inside, the app was a whole tethering application, a program so as to use your iPhone as a 3G modem, so you possibly can surf the net from your computer connected to the iPhone. All with no need to pay the additional $20 monthly that AT&T stupidly wants you to pay for that form of service. That $20 on top of the info plan you already pay for the iPhone.

It worked beautifully: You simply needed to installed a Wi-Fi network to your computer, connect your iPhone to it, change a couple of parameters for your computer\’s Wi-Fi settings, and that was it. Within seconds, your laptop was ready to surf the internet.

And use past tense because, unfortunately, it didn\’t last long. The app was pulled from iTunes as soon as news of its true nature appeared online.

A great story with a sad ending. Hopefully, they’ll keep republishing similar apps as they take them down. Let\’s do that again. [App Shopper, MacRumors, Forbes, AppStore HQ]

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This post is tagged: app, Apple, Disguised, guy, HOW, iPhone, tethering, Tricked, [IPhone]