Isn't this fraud and an open admission of guilty?
The article mentions it is in the UK.
Relevant fraud statute appears to be this: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2
It looks like all the criteria for it to be fraud are met.
However, it also looks like legislation in the UK disallows (and renders void) concerted practices which may affect trade within the United Kingdom, and have as their effect the distortion of competition within the United Kingdom, applying, in particular to practices which apply dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage. See http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/41/section/2
A concerted practice of charging the owners of well-known brands of smartphones less than the owners of less-known brands for an equivalent transaction would have the effect of lessening competition, because people might eschew a lesser known smartphone (increasing the barriers of entry to the smartphone market in the UK).
So there appears to be a good defence that price discrimination practices like this are illegal and void, and therefore circumventing it is not fraudulent.
Of course, out of an abundance of caution, I don't think it would be wise to volunteer to be a test case for this.
Edit: and IMO, it's toxic to the hacker spirit to be too quick in condemning ideas as illegal or immoral
On the other hand, if he had simply forgotten to change his UA back to the default (say, after doing some development work), then he couldn't possibly know that he was benefiting from the lower price, and it wouldn't be fraud at that point.
Personally, I have no problem with breaking trivial locks on otherwise non-sensitive networks. The word "fraud" usually conjures up much more serious crime.
* This is very quickly becoming a false assumption I think. Between listening to music from remote servers and watching video on my phone, I think mobile data use, especially in a vacation situation, is fast approaching that of "traditional" data use.
Is it fraud to use a battery charger or electrical plug with an adapter? After all, the particular plug is a way of "identification", even when easily circumvented. How about using aftermarket parts for your car or camera. They are implying by their similarly spaced and shaped connections that they are genuine parts after all... What about console cartridge identification chips?
These are somewhat interesting questions, if the HN crowd could have other opinions between "fraud" and "not fraud".
It's interesting to think when a hack becomes a fraud or stealing.
The only immoral thing here is the wifi provider increasing the complexity of the transaction to extract as much money as possible. Should one be required to tell the supermarket their net worth so they can be charged "appropriately" for their food? Anonymity is the basis for a shared existence.
Two parties whose sole interaction consists of sending signals back and forth certainly don't need the outside law to mediate between them - if one party finds the relationship unfavorable, simply stop talking. It's a shame that people have been so brainwashed into thinking it's their responsibility to enforce someone else's desired business rules.
No, it's common for highly technical web developers to do this. For 99.99% of the internet population, they do not even know what "user agent string" is or how to change it, or what to put in.
Switching user agent is perfectly legal.
Suppose they say "teachers" and you have a teaching license but aren't currently teaching. You present your teaching license and say "is this acceptable" and they say yes, you only need a teaching license to get the discount.
That seems pretty analogous to the current situation. You possess the token they request and that they subsequently use to give you a lower price. You've not committed fraud because you're legally allowed to use that UA string. It's up to the provider to decide if their requirement is "passes us this UA string" or "declares ownership of this device" (I don't consider those things identical by a long stretch).
Now if they say when you pass a particular UA string "do you confirm you're owner of $deviceType" or "this service is only for users of $deviceType" then I think things switch around in the direction of [rather minor] fraud.
In the UK, price discrimination by gender (e.g. by nightclubs) is illegal: see http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/your-...