Data "lost" in mobile or Windows

goodValue

I use my local library for internet access, but have a small amount of data on my mobile for urgent access out of library hours. I use it as a hotspot for an old laptop running Windows 10.

Some websites with ads, particularly those with video, could easily eat up my data  

How can you minimise, or even stop, the data loss?

Is there any Windows or browser (Chrome) settings I could use?

Is the data already "lost" in going through the mobile?

booneruk

I use Brave browser which blocks a lot of ads and other cruft by default. It's based on the same core as Chrome so it should be familiar

Vitor

Ad Blocker like UBLock Origin add-in is quite good for stopping ads.  A few websites detect your blocking ads, eg daily mail.  Make sure Windows is set to recognise that the hot-spot WiFi is a metered connection so it won't download updates etc. 

Aslan69

Use an ad blocker like uBlock Origin to block ads and videos.

Disable auto-play videos with a Chrome extension.

Set your hotspot as a metered connection in Windows to stop automatic updates.

Use extensions to block images or load text-only pages.

TMSG

I second @Aslan69's suggestion re uBlock Origin. This is an effective ad blocker and has the added advantage that you can block any media download above a certain size, say 256KB (you enter this in the options). All those blocked media can later be loaded piecemeal or in one go.
A word of warning though. Most if not all Chromium-based browser (including Chrome) have already or will soon stop supporting the full-featured uBlock Origin. There's a less powerful version available which works with these browsers but I haven't used it as I stick with my trusty Pale Moon plus uBO or Librewolf plus uBO and use Vivaldi (which has its own ad blocker) if needed.

goodValue

Thanks for the advice on the ad-blockers.
However, I'm not sure if this addresses the issue in the OP.
Don't ad-blockers just stop the ads being Displayed, rather than stopping the websites sending the ad data (and so the website is still using up valuable mobile data allowance).

booneruk

No, they will typically involve blocking requests to known advertising services which means no assets will be downloaded. A website doesn't send ads to you (typically anyway), instead they will instruct your browser to run a script from an advert provider. Once these scripts run in your browser they download graphics/videos etc. 

km1500

This may help...

Average Ad Data Downloaded per Page Load (Mobile) with/without ad blocker

Site Type                 Without        With 

News websites        2–5 MB      0.5–2 MB

Blogs                         1–3 MB      0.3–1.5 MB

Forums/Reddit        0.5–2 MB   0.2–0.5 MB

Retail/eCommerce 3–6 MB      1–3 MB

goodValue

booneruk said:

No, they will typically involve blocking requests to known advertising services which means no assets will be downloaded. A website doesn't send ads to you (typically anyway), instead they will instruct your browser to run a script from an advert provider. Once these scripts run in your browser they download graphics/videos etc. 

So the ad blocker stops all ad data being downloaded.
And I don't have to do anything on my mobile phone, which is a big plus.

Vitor

To minimise data consumption, disable preloading pages for faster browsing and searching for your browser. This stops the browser following page links and consuming data on pages you may never look at.

If you are really keen, in settings for the WiFi hot-spot network, change the DNS setting to use to AdGuard DNS which filters out requests to ad servers. Connect to public AdGuard DNS server