Two contracts, two reputations
Home fibre/DSL ToS and mobile-plan ToS are different documents. Bandwidth marketplaces price residential fixed-line exits higher than mobile/CGNAT pools — mobile-data-vs-home-wifi-earn-apps-europe-2026 covers rates; this page is the contract + etiquette layer.
USB tethering or personal hotspot still exits via the mobile operator. Your home ISP never sees that traffic — so home fair-use clauses do not “cover” a tethered overnight stack.
Hotspot checklist before you leave it on
A “temporary” hotspot that stays on for exam week is how students blow a mobile plan and a dashboard quality score together.
- Search mobile PDF for tethering, hotspot, fair-use, commercial use, proxy
- Check remaining high-speed GB — earn clients can burn a month of data overnight
- Expect CGNAT / shared mobile exits → softer marketplace rates — cgnat-vs-public-ip-earn-rates-europe-2026
- Never add VPN full-tunnel on top of hotspot “to look residential” — vpn-split-tunnel-vs-earn-app-bans-europe-2026
- One official client max on tethered laptop — stacking-earn-apps-safely-2026
- Stop if operator SMS warns about unusual traffic or speed drops mid-cycle
When home Wi‑Fi is still the better default
Unlimited or clearly fair-use home lines beat metered mobile for idle earn hours — isp-fair-use-bandwidth-europe-2026. Dorm/landlord Wi‑Fi may still ban sharing — dorm-wifi-earn-apps-europe-2026.
Phone-as-client on Wi‑Fi (not hotspotting a PC) is a different pattern — phone-vs-pc-bandwidth-earn-2026.
Tonight
If earn is on a hotspot now: pause it, switch to home Wi‑Fi when allowed, or leave earn off until you read both ToS PDFs. Hub: /guides/bandwidth-safety/. Start: /en/start/.