Excessive data with hotspot?

[Jarod Carlisle]

So Wednesday I was out using a refurbished Verizon jetpack (not sure of the model, but could look it up if asked) after my original bit the dust. I noticed an excessive amount of data usage even though I was only running GR3. As in, it shows I used nearly 5Gb in 4 hours. I switched over to my hotspot on my Verizon phone, and ran the rest of the day (about 4 more hours) using just over half a gb. Has anybody else seen anything like this? I know that both the jetpack and phone were both on 4G LTE basically 95% of the time.
I'm going to Verizon later today to see if they have an answer, just thought I'd see if anyone else has experienced this also (regardless of provider).

 

[Matt Tottle]

Malware and runaway apps (coughFACEBOOKcough) or updates would be my prime suspects..

 

[Todd Rector]

I hadn't used my Windows 8.1 tablet for a few weeks, then took it on a chase last year. It decided to use the convenient internet connection from my hotspot to update its software to the tune of several hundred megabytes while I was driving across Nebraska. GRRRR... This might not be the issue you are experiencing, but it's still a valuable lesson. Now I make sure both my tablets are connected to my home wifi the day before a chase and set Windows to only "notify" not update automatically. I agree with @Matt Tottle; if you run FB in the background it can be a real bandwidth hog - especially if you have it set to automatically play videos in your feed.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I left my crashplan (backup app) on and zinged through about 5GB in no time flat, hitting about 4GB in overages. That will be a hurtful $60.

With that said, I figured out that in Windows 8 you can connect to a wifi hot spot then right click it and set it as a metered connection and things like Windows update will not download. You also should probably go into Windows update and set it to Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them like this:

 

[Jarod Carlisle]

I did a cleanup with malwarebytes, and all updates last weekend and have Avast, so I'm pretty confident it's none of those, and things like fb weren't being used much at all. Just GR3, the SN client and GPSGate.
And as I said, once I switched to my phone as the hotspot the usage dropped dramatically.

 

[Todd Rector]

@Jarod Carlisle - Just out of curiosity, can you replicate the problem? LIke, if you go back to the hotspot right now will it continue to use lots of data? Also, good call on the malwarebytes. That's a handy program for Windows computers. @Ben Holcomb - Thanks for the illustration! I use linux almost exclusively (the only reason I have a Windows tablet is for GRL3) so I am not well-informed of Windows "features". I will definitely be setting it up as a metered connection now!

 

[Jarod Carlisle]

Haven't tried to replicate it, primarily because I don't want to use up the rest of my data. And thanks for the reminder about metered connections, I always forget that.
Going to Verizon in a bit to see what they think. Don't expect much help though. Just thought I'd see if anyone here had ever experienced this since we're all probably running much of the same stuff (and I'm probably running less than most).

 

[Todd Rector]

Perhaps you can persuade them to credit/comp you some data - It certainly doesn't hurt to ask! Report back if they were able to assist and/or find anything useful. I have an 11GB shared data plan so I would rarely have an overage, but if something happened to you that I can prevent happening to me I want to know!

 

[Jarod Carlisle]

I have 15Gb (with a bonus Gb this month) and I normally use about 10-12 in non-chase season, so yeah I'm concerned. I will report back with anything they find that may have been the culprit and/or any comp (I planned on asking).

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I blew through a ton of data on Wednesday because I let everyone else user my data with Hotspot. This seems like a nice thing to do but you don't know what other devices are running. I suspect someone had one of their apps going in and hogging data. Never again!

 

[Robert Forry]

Great thread. I've yet to use my Surface Pro on a chase or extended trip away from home for several hours. I still have my old Millenicom (Verizon) Jetpack with my a new 10G data plan that I'm curious to see how it performs away from the house (we use it at home for internet too). The plan basically goes out the window with our hard earned $$ now anytime we watch streaming vids, and other data robbing stuff like that. Going to take @Ben Holcomb's advice and make sure I'm chosing when I do those updates.

 

[James Hammett]

I have a line item on my chasing checklist to disable Crashplan before heading out as I've been burned by that before. Fortunately it slowing down my connection let me catch it early. I also have half a dozen apps that want to autoupdate all the time...I shut all that down.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Here's another little security tip: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2883958/how-to-detect-malware-infection-in-9-easy-steps.html

Roger is probably the most knowledgeable white-hat computer security guy out there, and a long-time Mcrosoft employee. I've been subscribed to his blog for a couple years. Sysinternals.com is awesome. About a week after I tried it out on my own computer (finding nothing) I had a friend tell me his computer was so messed up it was completely unusable. The next day I used Sysinternals.com on it and hunted down and killed the culprits. It was tons of fun. Seriously. Almost makes you want to install some viruses just for the fun of killing them.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I had this problem initially with my phone. My phone will download updates if it is on wifi, and so when it's connected to my car's router it treats it as any other land connection. I had to go in and manually disable the phone from using that particular wifi connection so it stays on cellular data when it's in the car. In addition to Windows updates, Firefox has also become rather cumbersome lately with frequent updates as well. I just go Ben's route and make all updates prompt before proceeding, and I haven't had any issues. Also, you'd be surprised how much data a simple Youtube video uses up. Pretty much any type of streaming video - either broadcast from you or watched - is going to burn through a lot more than you would expect.

 

[Eric Duncan]

Yeah. I had the same issue as Ben. Got hosed pretty hardcore with windows automatically updating. Thrashed about 2.1 gb of data in no time. Luckly im not on a contract and i had just prepaid $90 for 10gb so it wasnt a huge deal. Just kind of a kick in the sack. Having multiple tabs open at once chews up BW pretty quick too.