Forum

Compare mobile dongle usability
 

Ok I'm starting a new thread on the the very important dongles issue....or so I think!

I think they are the best option to avoid IP detection, and even better cheap enough to use one per computer, and still remain more or less on the same budget as with the home broadband.

I pay £13.50 for a BT line and £15.50 for broadband. Total:£29

x3 PAYG dongles from O2 (giffgaff) will cost you £10 each. Total:£30
and by using 3 computers life is much easier :)
(I have 3 computers and 2 laptops in my house LOL! Plus a lot of spare parts)

Now I was thinking of sharing my experience with the 2 companies I've tried so far and if others here do the same we will have a good understanding of which is the best one to go for.

1) Three mobile, on 1 month rolling contract (basically PAYG) 5gb download for £15/month. (dongle cost only £4.99).
a)Service: Its very good and the best of the 2 I've tried. Fast reliable connection but of course this can vary so better do a postcode check on the 3 website or even better at the 3 store (its more accurate).

b)IP variation: very variable IP ranges....I think it is nearly impossible to get the same IP twice ever! this is because the combinations are probably around 200.000.
It gives IPs from random surrounding areas within 100 miles of my location.
IP websites report it as dial-up DSL internet.

2) Giffgaff (basically O2) at a cost of £20 per dongle, free sim from giffgaff.com and £10 goodybag with unlimited internet.
a) Service: Very bad signal in my area, and I know many areas have a problem with the data transmittance. This is an issue with O2 and Vodafone because their network is old, and build for telephone conversations, not for data high volume transmitting....basically their masts are too far apart...which cause some areas to have no broadband capable signal at all.
Anyway I have managed to connect by hanging the dongles on the first floor window and using a 4 meter USB extension cable I get 2 to 4 lines and and a bit of switching between HSPA and WCDMA mode sometimes

b)IP variation: First of all, the variation is not much...only the last 2 numbers change but not much, so you get maybe just 10 IP variations...but something crazy is going on with the IPs!
OK this is what is what i know....
whatismyipaddress.com says my IP is for example xx.100.166.52 and is a London IP
whatsmyip.org says my ip is xx.100.166.60
IP-address.com says it is xx.100.166.53 and it is located in the middle of nowhere between Harrogate and Leeds
IPburger.com says my ip is xx.100.166.52

Refreshing the pages without disconnecting from the internet something even more strange happens...the last bit of the IP changes example from xx.100.166.52 to xx.100.166.66.

And the most strange of all after refreshing the whatismyipaddress.com page a few times it sometimes give a a much different IP xx.100.166.52 to xx.100.66.244

I've not tried using these with ebay/paypal yet.....do you think their system will like this very regular IP variation. Although their system may also be confused with the amount of people logging-in with the same IP.

Strange thing is the IP does not vary in the same way for all sites. and sometimes 2 sites that may agree on the IP number, suddenly they change and don't agree any more...like if the IP is assigned to the website instead of the dongle.
I keep refreshing both sites at the same time....different IPs shown.

I'm not sure if this giffgaff is good or not.... but we will find out soon i guess...and then I'm thinking what is the difference between this and a VPN? Because bottom line is, it is a VPN! whatismyipaddress.com does show "suspected network sharing device" for some of the IP's

This is all my knowledge on the subject for now....

I'm basically more interested on how variable the other networks IPs are, and if they stay stable or the change as you browse. In my examples you can see that 3mobile is very variable and keeps the IP until you disconnect while giffgaff constantly changes, and there is no much variation in IP range.

That's it for now...
Next i think I may try the T-mobile.
Coverage is good...but it is more expensive that 3mobile....£20 for the dongle and £15/month for 1GB data. (see above for 3mobile)
So please somebody comment on the T-mobile IP range...is it any good?

I use a tmobile dongle. I note down my ip adress every time i connect and since the day i bought it (4 months ago) i have never had the same ip address! Very good dongle! :)

^On the tmobile dongle.


Are the last 2 numbers the only numbers that change?

I have had the exact same issue using an orange mobile as a modem.

Been using a '3' dongle for the past 4 months, and have only had 2 recycled IP addresses in perhaps 500 new connections.

I use a '3' dongle. Perfect, no problems yet

How about you guys look at this:
Zoom 4597-00-00F 3G Modem ATT TMobile USB Unlocked 7.2MBPS Triband

If you have a SIM Card in you Phone and your Phone has a Data Plan,,You are all set,,Slide your SIM Card into this Modem and You are Online,,all your Computer needs is a USB Connection,,you Need NOTHING Else,,,and remember it is UNLOCKED so it will Work Anywhere

Good idea, but it's only triband and most likely will not support their countries. 850/1700/1900...that's pretty much North America only I think.

Yes its the last two 'sections' of the ip address that change. Still a new ip address though :):yar:

Why spend all this money? In the UK you can get a ZTE MF112 7.2mbps tri-band for £4.99 and only 1 month contract for £15 which means after 1 month you can switch to PAYG.
Also the huawei 1752cu from O2 for £20 (again 7.2mbps tri-band)
Both easy to unlock yourself and use on any network....

I'm sure you have similar low prices in the US.

The huawei 1752cu also supports voice calls (like a mobile phone) by using a modified version of huawei's Mobile-Partner software. Extra phone number is always useful.

There are Quad band Models as well that work wwith ANY GSM Provider on the Planet,,Also there MUCH cheaper Modems that do the SAME Exact thing as Pointed out by other posters,,I Simply used this Particular link for Illustration Purposes, I Know that there are MUCH Cheaper ones out there.

So, this means that 3Mobile comes as top choice in terms of IP variation, with at least 60,250 variations in my area!

The last 2 IP sections (in T-Mobile) is good enough.....giving 6025 possible variations!
Which means you have 1 in 6,025 possibilities to get the same IP. But again it also means that all other people connecting through T-mobile have 1 in 6,025 possibilites to get the same IP as you. This will confuse ebay/paypal....
Of course I guess if the IP mach with 2 similar paypal accounts you are basically done.

Still better than giffgaff with only around 10 variations. Although I've not come to a conclusion yet if the very small variation in IPs is bad or actually a very good thing. What I mean is....imagine if there was only 1 IP per country....Paypal would not be able to trace anybody through the IP.

Lets see some possible scenarios.
Now lets say 10,000 people connect to PayPal this week with the same IP, and different cookies, different flash cookies, and different User names!
This will mean PayPal will have to limit all or none....
If paypal limit these people...each one of them will probably call paypal and spend at least 2 minutes with a representative. PayPal will need 41 people working 8 hours each to handle these 2 minute calls.
If these representatives are on minimum pay £6/h it will cost paypal £1968 in just 8 hours!

How much paypal would make out of the 10,000 limitation causing transactions the people made? So would it be viable to limit these people???
If on average there was £200 involved in each transaction paypal will profit £52,000 Gross....so maybe £25,000 net?? I don't know!!!
Still....nearly 8% loss will be high just for one reason!
But then, PayPal will only target the Sellers....
If the sellers are 1 % of the people so this figure will be reduced to 0.08% loss.... and this is very viable!
So I don't know...because most of the figures I used are guessed. I think to be safe is better to stay with the high IP variation, or with a controllable IP, like on the ADSL through the land-line!
This way, linking through IP is dramatically reduced!

I use Giffgaff in my cracked dongal seems to work v.well in my area
O2 have two sets of settings to use, one is faster than the other and giffgaff sims work o2 settings.

Giffgaff also end there unlimied internet at the end of this month, mind you there traiff still seems quite fair after that.

I know I live in an O2 blackspot.....
Acording to their website, I should not have any Internet signal at all! But I managed to do OK. I found out that the reception is better if the dongle is horizontal and on top of a sheet of metal.

Anyway.... what kind of IP variation do you get? same as I explain above....only 10 variations or different??
if same as above, what is your experience having multiple paypal accounts on just a few IPs?

What O2 settings do you use? I have tried a coulpe without luck, so I left it on the dynamic setting (the dongle configures itself)

Anyway, I now have 3 giffgaff sim-cards, running on o2 dongles (i unlocked them anyway), and I bought another 3-Mobile dongle, so now I have 2 of them!
I will try a few accounts on giffgaff, but if it fails, I will replace them with T-mobile or vodafone depending who gives better IP variations.

So come on.....somebody with vodafone please.....how are the IPs there?


Before I go and spend more money on avodafone dongle :pop2:

Oh and somebody on Orange as well please, although I really dont like that company much....

help with dongle not working with giffgaff
 

Hi Kabatzas "et all",I have an unlocked vodafone dongle k3570-z it works great with a 3 network card in it but i can't get giffgaff to work in it I've tried various settings that i have seen posted for o2 but to no avail:doh: i have even tried activating 3g only etc still nothing,any ideas and help would be much appreciated ? i sent my mate a giffgaff card to try in his o2 dongle and same problem ? yet it works in iPhone 4 even for tethering...help please !!!!!

Leave it on automatic settings....thats what I do.
if not you need the giffgaff settings not the o2 ones.(O2 settings did not work for me either)
APN: giffgaff.com
Username: giffgaff
Password: password <-- literally just the word "password", not any password you have set up

if you use one do you need to change your mac address as well or are you covered if you use the dongle

The whole point of changing your mac address is to get a new IP.
If the dongle gives you a new IP every time, why would you want to change your mac address :confused:

Are you still with bt ? if you are then there is no real reason to be using a dongle.

Hey, interesting to hear this about the IP's with GiffGaff. I have been using a GiffGaff SIM in my HTC TYTNii's built in modem for nearly a year now, I noticed similar in that the IP addresses can be quite random, and even change while you are connected, but I have recorded different ones each time. I get pretty good HSDPA connection speeds from where I live (I live on the top floor of a high rise block with - yes you guessed it... An O2 mobile phone mast about 12 foot away from my phone!!! I get about 1 meg download speed which isnt bad.

I live in an O2 black-spot but signal strength improved a little bit in the last 2 months. Anyway even with the bad signal I still get the 1Mbit download speed.
IP range however is very narrow. Max 10 IP variations. I don't think this is a bad thing however, because if thousands of people use it, it cannot be isolated and blacklisted by PP.

Giffgaff forum members have confirmed that the IP range is very narrow too, but somehow they report different IP ranges than the ones I get.
Can you tell us what IPs you are getting?

Hi kabataz,

Yes I have noticed the IP range is quite narrow with GiffGaff, I seem to get an IP address that ranges between:

82.132.242.50

to

82.132.242.60

but sometime I get very different ones completely at random - and the IP addresses change by the minute. What IP addresses are you getting? I dont know if Paypal would recognise that these IP addresses are being used by thousands of people and so the IP identification would be ignored in this case. Touch wood, but so far I havent experienced any problems so far.

GiffGaff sux for this! Enough said

Laritha please can you expand on your statement above, - why "GiffGaff sux for this!..." as I mentioned I have used GiffGaff quite successfully, albeit for just one 'Stealth' account so far, but I have no reason to believe it wouldnt work for multiple accounts, I am waiting to hear what other people who are on GiffGaff's IP numbers have been if they are so limited, or are they just limited to a maximum of ten IP's per user? I dont know. But just making some blunt statement saying "GiffGaff sux..." isnt particularly helpful, know what I mean?

I get exactly the same IPs with Giffgaff

Now is this really a problem? On its own, not really!!
It is well known that paypal will not limit you just by IP.
ISPs have to rotate the IPs because the IPv4 most use at the moment has limited number of available IPs and basically there are no more of them to allocate.

I'm quite sure how PP traces similar accounts.
We all know it is possible to trace the type and version of operating system and browser the users computer has. What a lot of people don't know, is that when you visit a website, that website can very easily trace what other software is installed in your computer along with its version, screen resolution, window size, current cookies, Default character set, type of CPU used, Geolocation, DNS used, browser Plugins, compare local time to system time, and a bunch of other settings.
Have a look here BrowserSpy.dk
Click on each tool to see the results and then imagine how much more PP will have in place.

PP uses all this info, along with IP, type and issuing bank of credit cards, name of bank used, products for sale etc to determine if the account is any similar with another account, or even worse if it is similar to banned accounts. After a specific percentage is reached PP system will limit your account. It is a simple game of possibilities.

This is why I like to use different computers, with different software,different time settings, and connected with a different ISP.

Scary huh?
Not really....PP can only use the above as suspicious, none of them is solid proof. Providing the correct documents should get you back in the game.


Sorry if I went a bit off topic :)

Yes its frightening the amount of seemingly innocent information that paypal etc monitor and use for their purposes of banning people who have done nothing wrong!

why do you use various dongles/1 per account?
Would you say it's high risk to use the same dongle across multiple accounts?

thanks
:pop2:

why use various dongles at all, in fact why even track i.p if using different computer user accounts to each eby/pp, No point what so ever if everyone using GG is getting the same small i.p range.

Using one dongle per PP account gives you one thing less to worry about, and cannot make a mistake as easy.

I use different dongles, with different mobile networks, and I avoid disconnecting to minimize the IP changes (when I don't want them).

Multiple computers with different software installed, it is more important in my opinion than the different dongle. You just have to remember which computer to use with each PP account. I give my computers names related to a group of PP accounts, and I name the windows users after the names in the PP accounts. This way I cannot get confused :)

I just like to be extra careful....but as i said in my previous post, the right documents will probably get you out of trouble easy, unless you made a very big mistake and you have been linked very badly!

By the way, the narrow IP range with giffgaff, has its possitive and negative sides. You will always have the same 10 IPs, which is better than accessing one PP with 1000 different IPs. On the other hand, you will share these 10 IPs with your other PP accounts and with thousands of other people.

Has anyone used their tethered cell phone as a dongle? I just got the 4s and set up "hotspot" with my ATT service so I can use the internet with my laptop, it gives me a different ip each time, but if i want multiple amazon accounts do you know if the mac changes as well?

Depends on phone i guess

you can change the m.a.c on my htc hd2 but couldn't on my old phone, you can also change it on the galaxy s2

Question - With these dongles would you only need 1 with ebay or 1 per account? Been stealthing on amazon lately which needs a diff dongle per account cause they can trace mac address, ebay the same?

Not really , you need a different IP to each eby pp account, so if you record the i.p's from the begining then you just disconnect the dongle when changing accounts and make sure the new I.P is not in your record before you actually sign into ebay PP