> Yeah, must have been those “others” abusing the system while all you were doing was accessing free data in China, Iran and Iraq!
Seriously, what's the problem with that? That model had a basic web browser, so it was basically designed to be used this way. I used it in emergency situations (without taking the card out) for checking email and the like. It was slow and clumsy, but it worked. It would not occur to me that since I'm abroad I'm doing something wrong because the device was actually advertised as having global Internet connectivity, and it was one of the reasons I bought it.
Not much of a problem, just that a global sim with access to unlimited data in those countries must've cost a fortune for Amazon to maintain once those flat-rate providers realized some "Kindles" were using a lot of unexpected data and asked for more money or a data cap.
It's not abuse if the use is within the terms of use. At most you can just call it a bad deal for Amazon or simply an "advertisement cost" of the phrase "Global access."
If anything it's to be applauded that "global" really meant global, not just "yeah global as long as you're in USA, CA, UK, EU, AU, NZ." So many times my "global" MasterCard did not work in some whole country.
> a global sim with access to unlimited data in those countries must've cost a fortune
Nearly every country in the world has at least one mobile network that has a roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom. They have negotiated rates at high volumes in the cents/GB regardless of local pricing shenanigans.
DT is often the local cell providers gateway for international calling, so they have quite a bit of leverage.
If you have to extract a key to do what you're doing, then you should stop and think if you were intended to do this and if you think it's therefore a honest thing to do.
Seriously, what's the problem with that? That model had a basic web browser, so it was basically designed to be used this way. I used it in emergency situations (without taking the card out) for checking email and the like. It was slow and clumsy, but it worked. It would not occur to me that since I'm abroad I'm doing something wrong because the device was actually advertised as having global Internet connectivity, and it was one of the reasons I bought it.