Disguised tethering app tricks Apple

Just a simple flashlight app...or not.

Nick Lee, a 15-year-old app designer, tricked Apple with his simple iPhone application: Handy Light. On the outside, the app appeared to be exactly as it was said to be, a commonplace flashlight app. It just blanks the screen and you can choose colors — nothing exciting…or so Apple thought. Why should they have thought differently? It looks just like all the other useless flashlight apps. Little did they know that this simple application, was much more useful.

On the inside, this app was a full blown tethering application that allowed you to use your iPhone as a modem and surf the internet on any connected computer. Plus, you could do it all for only $o.99 instead of the outrageous $20 a month that AT&T wants you to pay for tethering, on top of the monthly data usage cost for the iPhone.

It worked wonders: You just needed to set up a Wi-Fi network on your computer, connect your iPhone to it, change a few parameters in your computer’s Wi-Fi settings, and that was it. Oh, I almost forgot the coolest part. This is practically out of a James Bond movie. In Handy Light, you press the color combination: Blue, Yellow, Red and then press the top right corner. In a short few seconds, your laptop was able to surf the web.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. The app was yanked from iTunes as soon as news of its true abilities appeared online. The bright side, though, is this: Those who downloaded it, can keep enjoying its benefits.

If you were lucky enough to download this app, here is how to use it.

Via: Gizmodo