The Palm Pre is one of the most hackable smartphones on the planet. That's a design feature, not a flaw. Palm wants to compete with the iPhone, and one of the few areas where Apple is easy to beat is modifiability.

One of the coolest hacks we've seen for the Pre so far is the tethering modification that several enterprising Palm fans figured out early on. Sprint doesn't support tethering on the Pre, but they don't explicitly forbid it either. For a short time, guides to tethering the Pre popped up all over the Internet and all was well. Unfortunately, this golden age was not to last.

Palm contacted the groups giving out tethering guides and warned them that continuing to spread tethering information would provoke a reaction from Sprint. Palm was nice about it, and they made it clear that they had no issue with what their fans were doing, but they warned that Sprint would take action if tethering guides started to spread.

If you've already got your Pre set up to tether you're probably fine continuing to do so. But, if you value your bank account, don't spread the information online or Sprint will do terrible things to you with lawyers.