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What/who could be using my internet data?


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Last month, for the first time, we exceeded our 100MB on our Telcel internet at home plan.  This happened three weeks into the month.  So this month I have been monitoring our usage, turning off the modem at night, asking everyone to log off their devices and use infinitum (we have both).  Yet, the data is still being consumed!   I log into mitelcel and take a screen shore of our data balance.  I turn off the modem and in the morning our balance went down by 60 MB.   Yesterday was the worst, noone was home and we left the modem on and it went down by 30GB, yes giga bytes with noone in the house. Our closest neighbor is 200M away. 

Could someone give me some insight as to what may be happening?  I plan on going to Telcel later and asking them but would love to hear some thoughts from others. 

Thank you. 

 

 

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It's possible that the system (MiTelcel) that shows how much data you've consumed, may not be a "real time" measurement.  It might take a few hours or longer before that system is updated.  If so, when you shut down the modem and then check MiTelCel, if you check it later (maybe in the morning) before turning the modem back on, the data may have changed. 

Is your Telcel modem a Huawei model?  Is Wifi turned on?  Do you still use the original Huawei password?  There is talk of apps available that can provide the original passwords used for (all/some) Huawei modems.  Having the app and a little time, a person may be able to determine your password, and then possibly using your Wifi for their own needs.

Even if you've changed from the original, a determined knowledgeable person can probably figure out your password by using other tools available.

There are various programs that can offer you some information, "whosonmywifi" is one.  A program for Windows, it can scan your modem's Wifi connections and tell you the ID of each device connected.  You can learn the ID number of each of your devices by checking them individually, or, you turn on the modem, make sure no one is connected, and scan with the above program.  In this fashion, there shouldn't be any devices connected, and the program should tell you there are no connections.  Then you can add devices one at a time, and rescan between each one connected, and write down the device ID's the program shows you.

Another option might be to (get help) set up your modem so that only the devices you approve, can connect via your Wifi.

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My cell phones sucks MB day and night, whether awake or in sleep mode. There are many apps that provide constant notifications, and check regularly for updates, and so on. Many are intrinsic to the operating system of the company that made the phone, and cannot be uninstalled, but can often be disabled. I make judicious use of the ability to use only WiFi when at home and only data when on the road, but there are a number of confusing settings, and they are different for ever brand and even for every model within a brand. My own phone is set so it never updates a: unless I tell it too, and b: only when I am on WiFi. At this moment, there are 125 updates "waiting".

It is very difficult to access someone else's WiFi without having the right tools, and sitting outside your house with a laptop and using those tools... none of which are easily available and some that case thousands of dollars. It is doubtful that any fly-by-night WiFi thief can do that, or would care enough about your specific WiFi location to even try.

I recommend you dig through ALL the settings on your phone, using Google when you need help with any particular one.

I might add that 100MB is not much at all when videos and voice chat is involved.

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I want to reiterate what ComputerGuy said.  Several years ago I noticed my cell phone was gobbling gigabytes, and after some research I realized my phone was updating on a daily basis--and when it was updating it didn't update the update, but updated as if from scratch, starting at 0.  For several  updates that could be a GB a day!

Based on what I read I set my phone to manual update (instead of automatic) and I do it periodically when I am on wifi. Problem solved. 

 

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1 hour ago, ComputerGuy said:

My cell phones sucks MB day and night, whether awake or in sleep mode. There are many apps that provide constant notifications, and check regularly for updates, and so on. Many are intrinsic to the operating system of the company that made the phone, and cannot be uninstalled, but can often be disabled. I make judicious use of the ability to use only WiFi when at home and only data when on the road, but there are a number of confusing settings, and they are different for ever brand and even for every model within a brand. My own phone is set so it never updates a: unless I tell it too, and b: only when I am on WiFi. At this moment, there are 125 updates "waiting".

It is very difficult to access someone else's WiFi without having the right tools, and sitting outside your house with a laptop and using those tools... none of which are easily available and some that case thousands of dollars. It is doubtful that any fly-by-night WiFi thief can do that, or would care enough about your specific WiFi location to even try.

I recommend you dig through ALL the settings on your phone, using Google when you need help with any particular one.

I might add that 100MB is not much at all when videos and voice chat is involved.

Thank you but it's not my phone.  It is their internet at home service via a modem.  Oops sorry, it's 100 GB plan that I am on.

I've had everyone turn off their Telcel connection and only use infinitum for  this past three days and I am still losing data like crazy!

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9 minutes ago, miomama said:

Thank you but it's not my phone.  It is their internet at home service via a modem.  Oops sorry, it's 100 GB plan that I am on.

I've had everyone turn off their Telcel connection and only use infinitum for  this past three days and I am still losing data like crazy!

Nevertheless, it is the modems that provide the data, and the phone that uses it. The modem itself will rarely use any data.

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Are you saying all your computers were off and you don't have any smart TVs or anything connected to the wifi? If you have left a computer on and it has connected to the modems wifi, it may be infected with malware. As alongtheway mentioned, you should whitelist the devices that are allowed to connect to the wifi, of course making sure it has a secure password and the wifi is WPA2 (the default minimum of most modern wifi routers). I don't know anything about your modem but if you are an experienced user, you could try Wireshark to catch the data hog.

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31 minutes ago, Rassabossa said:

Are you saying all your computers were off and you don't have any smart TVs or anything connected to the wifi? If you have left a computer on and it has connected to the modems wifi, it may be infected with malware. As alongtheway mentioned, you should whitelist the devices that are allowed to connect to the wifi, of course making sure it has a secure password and the wifi is WPA2 (the default minimum of most modern wifi routers). I don't know anything about your modem but if you are an experienced user, you could try Wireshark to catch the data hog.

Yes, all computers, TV, cellphones, tablets, ebook readers were either powered off, or wifi were turned off.  The one that stumps me was when noone was home which means there were no devices in the house (we all took our laptops, phones) we still lost data. 

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Yes, something is surely rotten in Denmark.... or in this case at your casa. Several things do not add up.  32GB gone in one day is like watching 10 HD movies and even if someone were close enough to steal your wifi signal they'd be hard pressed to use that much data. Losing a bunch of MB is one thing, losing a ton of GB is quite another.

You best bet is to get to Telcel ASAP because none of us are going to be able to troubleshoot that kind of data loss that quickly. 

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If you are sure no one is using your wifi, by blacklisting all but accepted devices, you will need Telcel to get involved and hunt down the issue. They should be able to monitor any traffic coming from your modem and determine what the traffic is (or if its merely reporting incorrectly).

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If you are using a cell-based internet, you should go into your settings and set your computer on "Metered connection". This will prevent updates from automatically downloading. Then you can choose which updates you want. Same with your phone. Make sure it's not on automatic update. 

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