Excessive data with hotspot?

[Jarod Carlisle]

I have update prompts on and my phone wasn't connected to the hotspot. No streaming, no viewing vids, and minimal web usage. I was monitoring it the entire time, and it was a steady climb.

 

[Drew Terril]

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.

I always forget about Firefox updates. Since I run Ubuntu, Firefox updates are packaged in with any other updates to the system.

 

[Mark Blue]

I received an email on 3/18 from Verizon that I have a boatload of smart reward points and I could add an extra gig of data for 5000 points. I'm planning to burn points in May and June if it's still available, otherwise they'll never get used. This is what the fine print said:

The 1 GB of Promotional Data can only be redeemed by Verizon Wireless customers on MORE Everything Plans that include data. Offer may not be substituted, exchanged, sold or redeemed for cash or other goods or services. Must have a valid Verizon Wireless Mobile Telephone Number (“MTN”). Promotional Data will be added to your existing monthly data allowance. Promotional Data will be shared by all lines on an account. You can see when the Promotional Data expires by going to My Verizon -> My Usage -> Data -> then click “Promo Usage for All Lines.” If you visit My Verizon immediately after redeeming the Promotional Data, you may have to sign out and sign in again to see the change reflected in your account.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Ric Burney]

Don't forget about any Adobe products you might have which will default to automatically updating upon installation.

 

[Jarod Carlisle]

So I spoke to tier 2 tech yesterday, and their belief is it was something to do with the jetpack (it was a refurbished one and this was the first use). Since they cannot see specifically what all I was using it for that day, they can't make a clear determination. My billing cycle starts over on the 19th, so I'm going to run a test then running GR3 and the SN client for an hour on the jetpack and on my phone. If the data usage is drastically different they will replace it (or so she said). Will update again once the test is done.
And yes Mark, I got the additional Gb as well. Ric, I removed Adobe crapware because it could never actually update, same with Java. I have nothing that updates automatically.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Windows 8/8.1 allow you to identify networks as "metered", which stops a lot of background data usage by Windows Update and live tiles/apps.

I didn't even consider the Android updates, but yeah if it's got a bunch to do and you've been on cell data for a while, it'll drag them all in the second it connects to Wifi. You'll especially feel it if your phone decides to pull in the Lollipop update - that's over 1GB by itself.

Firefox isn't responsible, the updates are between 20 and 40 megs, and that's only a few times a month. "Point Point" patches (like 37.0.1 to 37.0.2) are only a few megs.

It isn't just having multiple tabs open in and of itself that uses data, it depends on the content on the tabs. If you have pages that that do hard refreshes at specific intervals (like SPC) or pages with lots of dynamic data (like Facebook) those will be constantly using data even when you aren't interacting with the pages.

I'm actually happy with my lil' rural carrier now (NexTech) since I told Sprint where to stuff it... I have unlimited data, and basically roam for free on Sprint and VZW's 3G and LTE.

 

[Jarod Carlisle]

Yeah so I didn't run a test yet, primarily because of 2 factors:
1) I ran on the jetpack the other day and usage was equal to phone hotspot.
2) I think MAYBE Verizon cloud decided to upload multiple vids from my laptop that day (even though they should have uploaded the weekend before).

I'm going to watch tomorrow to see what my usage is, but from the past week's observations it may not have been the obscure data hog I first thought.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

BTW my chases have been averaging about 1GB of data usage, that includes video uploads etc. I do not stream, so that's not factored in.

 

[Todd Rector]

OMG this isn't really chase-related but it's sort of on topic anyway. My data plan (11GB) reset on April 15th. On the 18th we took a trip to Minnesota. My daughter took her iPad, and started watching a movie from iTunes. Two hours later I get an email from Verizon saying I had used 75 percent of my data for the month. My daughter thought the movie was stored locally, but she had actually connected to my car's hotspot and was streaming it in HD from the iTunes cloud. She blitzed through 8GB in TWO HOURS. We are limping along 'til the 15th this month, knowing we are going to go over on our plan and pay a premium. UGH. Expensive lesson. All for a kids cartoon movie.

 

[Bob Schafer]

A two hour movie cannot be 8GB. They run about 3GB.

 

[Matt Tottle]

That's for a 720p file. The same movie in 1080p would be almost twice as large.

 

[Todd Rector]

A two hour movie cannot be 8GB. They run about 3GB.

Yeah, not really sure about the specifics. Just going by what Verizon told me in their email - their website isn't specific enough to tell me exactly what was downloaded, but my hotspot was definitely the guilty party.

 

[czenzel]

I recently had an issue were my Verizon Jetpack/Mifi appeared to be taking a large amount of data. It turned out that Windows 10 with Office 365 (2016 Beta) was my biggest problem with the new automatic updates. They use streaming updates (cloud connections) to keep the products updated. I found it was best to try to turn off automatic updates on cloud-based products.