Cannot turn off personal hotspot

I've just received a huge bill thanks to instant hotspot and my children connecting to my phone without my knowledge. Is Apple going to help pay for this?

Beware of this feature. It's not a good one.

LeeStav wrote:

I've just received a huge bill thanks to instant hotspot and my children connecting to my phone without my knowledge.

Whenever anyone is connected to your personal hotspot, there is a blue banner across the top of the screen that tells the number of connections. It's extremely annoying as it gets in the way of some screens. Did you not see it?

This is a bad security and privacy issue. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with iCloud accounts. It looks like my phone is using Bluetooth to send out the hotspot signal, even though the hotspot setting is turned off on my phone. Case in point, I am at work right now, with bluetooth turned on, and all of my co-workers can also see my hotspot / device name (which displays as my first and last name) when they go to their wifi settings. They're not logged into their computers with my iCloud account, I assure you. The only thing we share in common, is that we're all connected to the same wifi network in the office. As soon as I turn off bluetooth, my device appears from view for them.

Regardless, if I have personal hotspot (or instant hotspot) turned off, then no one should be able to see my device. Some devices (like FitBits) require bluetooth connectivity to be on for syncing. But this instant hotspot feature will in turn expose us and potentially our identity to other people and devices around.

Apple needs to fix this.

Just because your co-workers can see your SSID doesn't mean they can access your personal hotspot. They would need the password for that. If you don't want your name showing, change the phones name in Settings>General>About>Name. My, for example, just says "iPhone".

I had a bunch of people including the store manager unable to solve this issue for me. My son used over $550 last month whilst we were on holidays streaming youtube videos!!! They claim they had never heard about this. Did you find a solution?

Jez Blaze wrote:

Me too! Class action?

What are you talking about? Why would I want to sue Apple if I had made a mistake in how I use my phone? But, I didn't. I don't believe there has been a time I have been unaware that my hotspot was being used.

FYI, I found out this issue by mistake when I received a notification from Verizon Wireless that I consumed 50% of my data plan just 7 days into the contract month. I looked into it further and found out that the Personal Hotspot was on for 2 hours one night what my wife was using her iPad to read at night. Apparently there was a power interruption for a while at night and the iPad connected with her iPhone Personal Hotspot and used 2.1GB of data during the night. I think this is a terrible design flaw from Apple and they should give us the ability to turn the Personal Hotspot completely instead of disabling your iCloud account.

This is crazy IMO. I've sent feedback to Apple:

"With instant hotspot anyone using my Mac legitimately can, if it is signed into iCloud, turn ON hotspot on my iPhone even though I have DELIBERATELY disabled it. Thus if I give someone my laptop to do something (maybe be kids or a friend) but they change the connection to hotspot it could activate the hotspot on my phone and unless I check my phone I would be unaware, at potentially serious cost!!

I should not have to sign out of iCloud, with all the grief that entails (what with disabling Find my Mac, not to mention all the problems with re-establishing keychain connections), just so I can give it to my kids or a friend to do something.

There should at LEAST be the option to:

turn off hotspot COMPLETELY for all devices (including those using the same iCloud account).

turn off but allow devices signed in on iCloud to connect

turn on

terrible answer....suggesting a workaround instead of fixing the issue...why would you want to change your iPhone name? name of the iPhone is not the issue reported here...

I agree this is a design flaw, we should have the control to allow hotspot or not, currently we cannot by switching off the hotspot button. I have also reported to apple support so hopefully we will hear from them soon.

This would not have been a problem if we are given the control to switch hotspot on or off...I had the same issue still waiting for a solution to turn it off, the only way to switch off for now is if you switch off bluetooth.

Hoping for a better solution.

tteulilo wrote:

terrible answer....suggesting a workaround instead of fixing the issue...why would you want to change your iPhone name? name of the iPhone is not the issue reported here...

I agree this is a design flaw, we should have the control to allow hotspot or not, currently we cannot by switching off the hotspot button. I have also reported to apple support so hopefully we will hear from them soon.

My answer had to do with a side question. 00terp seemed to think that a visible SSID meant people anyone who could see it could access their hotspot. I advised this is not the case. No one who is not sharing your iCloud account can access your personal Hotspot without the passcode. I added, just for the sake of completeness to that question but not because it's related to the original question that, if one doesn't want one's coworkers to know it's their phone, change the SSID. Some people don't care to broadcast their name to anyone with a wifi capable device. So, it's a perfectly good answer to the question that was asked.

I highly doubt it's a design flaw. It may be a design decision with which you disagree but that doesn't mean that Apple didn't think it out fairly carefully.

Thanks for the clarification of why you gave that answer which does not add any value to the issue by changing SSID but still broadcasting it.

But you're correct in saying that I disagree with the "design decision" of Apple, I just don't like it when my iPad or Macbook automatically picks up the hotspot without my knowledge or permission in that point in time. You just have to search this topic on google to see how many apple fans and users are disagreeing with this "design decision". It uses up iPhone battery faster too.

I guess we'll just have to live with this design if we still want to use apple products.

I believe that the answers offered re family sharing and not letting others onto your Apple ID and therefore having control of the personal hotspot overlooks the fact that pre family sharing many family members would use the same Apple ID. Whilst the decision to enable hotspot control is to enable information sharing across a number of devices on the same account, it overlooks that there is no manner in which to transfer pre family sharing in-app purchases or game progress between the different family sharing devices. My son has thousands of dollars of these kind of purchases done pre and post introduction of family sharing and the consequent inter connectivity of the latest iOS platform including hotspot control. Ultimate control of the hotspot could be a simple as having an option put on the phones settings e.g. allow devices to connect to hotspot remotely (an override button so to speak) to enable it to be absolutely turned off unless enabled on the phones settings...

I also had the same problem. The kids in the back seat of the car were watching videos and surfing the web after their ipads automatically activated the personal hotspot on my iPhone 6S without me knowing it was activated, even with the switch off they were still able to connect. Solution from Apple support was to reset network settings on all devices, shut off Bluetooth on the ipads and toggle the wifi off and on across all devices, this solved the problem for me but doesn't recover the $100 in data charges that they racked up. Thanks Apple for this ridiculous feature to make a few users happy.

My hotspot shows up and I was confused because I don't pay for a hotspot for my phone. Everyone is saying that only iPad Air is able to see the hotspot. However, my mom's Samsung was able to connect to the hotspot on my phone as well as my iPad Air....