Broadband usage- confused

scottishminnie

Hi

I've had an email from Bt today advising that I am close to my broadband usage limit. The email states that for the month of August I a have used almost 9gb against a limit of 10gb. My new month begins on Sept 1st.

I'm worried about this- I only use the internet to browse. No downloading and no streaming so I can't understand it.

Could I have unwittingly turned anything on which is causing this?

I called BT to see if they could give me an idea of whether there was a sudden spike in usage or any more info which would help me narrow it down however they say they can't help so I'm hoping someone more knowledgable and helpful on MSE can make some suggestions.

Thanks

HappyMJ

10GB isn't hard to reach. Just a couple of hours general browsing per day is around 200MB per day. Maybe you were just browsing a bit more than average. Maybe you had lots of updates on your computer or on your phone which you may have linked through your wi-fi. My phone doesn't do too much on the internet but it's already used 1.2GB the the last week. 10GB just isn't as much these days. I'd consider switching away from BT and onto a supplier which will give you unlimited internet for the same price.

peterwot

<MSE News: BT to refund customers after Fon wi-fi blunder>

Have a look at earlier threads with above title.

kwikbreaks

That was a past error. Of course they could have repeated it....

JJ_Egan

Your BT account shows your daily broadband usage .
Log in and view .

Pincher

Ideally, you want to keep checking the usage monitor, and stop using it when you reach 9.9GB, if it updates in real time: but it doesn't.
They claim to update within 24 hours, but it effectively is 48 hours behind your usage.

But then, it's very smart of BT to make you pay £5 extra, without any proof that you went over, as there is no place on the statement where it says you used 10.1 GB.

Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds.

forgotmyname

Is all the sneaky stuff the websites do in the background. This webpage has over 120 images loading...

The page itself is only about 75kb But it loads well over 400kb of images.

It connects to various other websites also. Googleapis, visualwebsiteoptimiser, chartbeat, googletagmanager etc etc etc....

If you use facebook the list of images and websites it connects to fills half my screen. Photobucket is just as bad.

kwikbreaks

Some supposed optimiser addons can chase every link on the page and pre load them too. In the main though 10GB should be more than enough for a few hours simple surfing each day. Running an ad blocker would maybe help - I certainly do on 3G.

macman

Are you using wireless connection, and if so it is properly secured?

poppasmurf_bewdley

I had a similar experience as the OP when I first connected my Sky HD+ box.

Even though I wasn't downloading anything myself, the box seemed to download lots of stuff all by itself.

scottishminnie

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

I had a similar experience as the OP when I first connected my Sky HD+ box.

Even though I wasn't downloading anything myself, the box seemed to download lots of stuff all by itself.

Bit of an update - co-incidentally linked to Sky!


Hubby took a cold call from sky recently and ended up agreeing to them sending a little box thing for Sky on Demand. The box came and hubby followed the instructions and attached it. After multiple attempts at connecting he decided it was useless and abandoned it.
Although he never got to the stage of downloading any films I'm now wondering if it has been using the connection and eating up the broadband limit.


I'm more than a bit annoyed. Hubby is even less technical than me and had no idea that using this box would impact on the broadband usage and the sky agent didn't mention this (presumably imagining that everyone understands how it works). Safe to say the box has been unplugged and will be going to the big wheelie bin before the next collection.


Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and apologies for the wild goose chase!