My husband and I travel regularly for our work. When we do this and there isn't a good WiFi source available we will activate WiFi mobile hotspot on an HTC One. We have found during our last trip that our data usage continues to increase each time we go on one of our trips and use our device this way. The type of workload we have (email , file exchanges, etc.) does not change too frequently. However, during our last trip we noticed a significant increase in the data usage we had using the WiFi (we normally average 10-12 GB during these trips, on the last trip we nearly topped out 20 GB). We checked our other devices and the content of our emails/activity but have not been able to pinpoint a cause for this significant increase in the data usage. The only other time we've encountered spikes in our data usage was when we intentionally did some video streaming, but that only ate up a few GB at a time. Right now my only other suspicion is that all of the embedded advertising/videos/banners from websites in our browser sessions may be the cause. Does anyone have a method for trying to disable some of the videos & moving ads? I've tried disabling the flash plug-in but that only seems to stop a small amount of this type of content. We mostly use Google Chrome for our browser, but I do have to use Internet Explorer to access a hosted software, so IE use is very limited.
While we don't mind paying a fair share for our data usage during these trips, if we can't make this work we may have to start shopping carriers to find an unlimited data option. I'd prefer to stay with Verizon for many reasons, but can't afford to pay for 20+ GB even a couple of times per year. We weren't lucky enough to be one of those grandfathered into the unlimited data plans from years past.
Consider an ad blocker.
Also, I would set the wifi connection to your HTC hotspot as a metered connection on your PC. This will prevent your PC using this for downloading updates plus I believe it keeps track of how much data is used. To do this: Open your Start menu and select Settings to launch it. Click or tap the “Network & Internet” icon, select “Wi-Fi,” and select “Advanced options” at the bottom of the list of nearby Wi-Fi networks.
Reference for Windows 10 (This also works on Windows 7 and 8 in similar way): How, When, and Why to Set a Connection as Metered on Windows 10
A lot of video is now using HTML 4 instead of flash, which is why disabling flash doesn't stop much anymore. This is built in to the browser.
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