How do I prevent Personal Hotspot from automatically activating whenever a device decides to connect to my phone.

I'm surprised by people who argue that this behavior is by design.

I have two iphone 7s, each with different carrier.

One is with capped data plan (with slowed down connection after the limit), the other is an incremental data addition (with rather high cap, $$$).

A single apple ID is set in both devices and I'm carrying both most if time. Both have BT on.

Recently one iphone started to use the other's LTE data by turning Hotspot on. This often happens when I go out and it keeps doing it even after I come back home. Both should use home wifi, obviously.

To those who insist that this is by design, a question:

Which iphone initiates remote hotspot to sneak in to the other to steal lte bandwidth even though both devices aer allotted proper LTE data plan?

If this behavior us by design their must be rules that determines which device gets the hotspot role. Any user-readable documentation anwhere?

Who earns much money from this?

It's super clear that it is cellular carriers who gets most money. Its easy to imagine that Apple is doing this to help cellular carreirs.

Reading through most of this thread I have an issue with my personal hotspot which drives me crazy. For my car I have personal hotspot turned on, and whenever i plug it in to charge on my macbook macos disconnects from the perfectly working wifi connection and starts to use my cellular data. Is there a way I didn't discover or is this a flaw in the way networking works in macos?

Hi Lawrence - when I said automatically - what actually happened was I was messing about looking at handoff and WiFi and Bluetooth settings and clicking on the WiFi and Bluetooth icon on menu bar - and then my iPhone WiFi turned off and became a hotspot - .

I then repeated what I did to test and it happened again - it’s some option within the WiFi icon top of screen I think - I think i saw my phone on a drop down and clicked it - can’t remember exactly . It was late and I was doing lots of things at once .

What I mean is that there should have been a big message either on my phone or on my Mac or both to say

“Do you want to turn off iPhone WiFi and create hotspot” . The Mac actually changed a setting dynamically on my phone without confirmation that I intended to do that . I realise my pressing buttons activated this !!

I’ll try and do this again more scientifically and nail the actual process - but I still think there should be an alert and require confirm before this type of setting is changed.

Paul

PS All - I realise this may be a useful feature if you know what you are doing - so maybe a one time confirmation and then don't ask me again type of thing. So idiots like me don't accidentally do stupid things.

The only thing I don't understand is, if my kids all have their own Apple ID,

Are you sure they are using their own Apple IDs for iCloud? Instant Hotspot should only be available in the following conditions.

Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch - Apple Support

It is not a security problem at all. The assumption is the user owns both devices... the device providing the cellular data and the device using it via Instant Hotspot.

Feedback for Apple goes here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

This is not a security flaw. The feature automatically connects devices on the same Apple ID. Other devices will not be able to access your instant hotspot without having the password to your personal hotspot or being connected with the same Apple ID.

With Instant Hotspot, the Personal Hotspot on your iPhone or iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular) can provide Internet access to a Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch without requiring you to enter the password on those devices.

Source: Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch - Apple Support

No, that answer has nothing to do with remote hotspot activation.

The whole debate is tied up in the first bullet. When "personal hotspot is disabled" the other devices can enable it!

So turn off automatic updates.

I hate to ask this, but if this is how it, why is there even an option to turn the hotspot on and off? Even if it’s turned off, it’s on.

The "hole" is that a laptop can connect to the phone and use up lots of data whithout the phone's owner knowing it is happening.

I’m happy you found I, an there’s no harm in repeating in a long thread.

Bingo!!! Thank you so much for your response, it was the most helpful of them all. I'm now turning off BT on my IPhone, just to be sure. Could not figure out why my phone kept showing up even though Personal Hotspot was turned off!

Thanks again!

David

Bingo!!! Thank you so much for your response, it was the most helpful of them all. I'm now turning off BT on my IPhone, just to be sure. Could not figure out why my phone kept showing up even though Personal Hotspot was turned off!

Thanks again!

David

I have the same complaint. We share IDs because we have young children. So I don't' want them to have their own IDs. I walk into the house and their connection moves off of the wifi in the house, and on to my phone. If my phone isn't connected to the wifi in the house, they start accessing the web over my LTE connection, running up my wireless phone data usage.

It's insane. For my dime, nothing should ever be "automatic" unless I decide it should be automatic.