T-Mobile’s CEO and president John Legere is leading a battle against a small number of customers who are abusing T-Mobile’s tethered data limits by a large margin, which he said cheats honest customers and his company. Less than 1 percent of current customers with unlimited data plans are installing apps or creating shields to allow them to by-pass the 7GB restriction. Legere referred to such users as “clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain”.

Don’t mess with T-Mobile, unless you want to be eliminated from using its service. To use more than 7GB, customers must purchase more access from T-Mobile.

“We are going after a small group of users who are stealing data so blatantly and extremely that it is ridiculous”, said Legere on Sunday. To stop it, T-Mobile is putting the thieves on notice immediately and advising them that the company will do everything in its power to fight them and stop them, he wrote.

In an FAQ, the company said it is “absolutely not” doing this to extract extra money out of its heaviest users. In March, the “uncarrier” introduced its Next-Gen Network Map, which it dubbed the industry’s first and only crowdsourced, customer-verified network coverage map. “That way, we can enforce our terms and conditions and protect the network experience for all customers”. “Make no mistake about it – this is not the same issue”. To determine the victor, Ookla gathered results from more than 5 million speed tests and averaged the results from each user and device in particular locations in an effort to improve accuracy and reduce bias from repeated tests, according to TmoNews. We’re going to lead from the front on this, just like we always do. “That’s how I would do it”.

Regardless of how it is used, T-Mobile will no longer be turning a blind eye to customers exploiting its services. Once they have used their allocation, their connection speed is subject to throttling.

It’s also telling that it’s T-Mobile making the statements about “network thieves” when it has positioned itself as the disruptor that’s focused on helping consumers – in contrast to the other carriers – yet it’s cracking down on these renegades. However, with some fairly simple workarounds on rooted Android phones, users trick the carrier into seeing tethering use as normal cellphone use – and according to T Mobile, some people are abusing that to the tune of 2TB a month.