Data Usage

I’ve been having the same issue. My internet is also going down for hours at a time every couple hours. Might work good for a day then it **bleep**s out. 

There are a number of things that can cause excess data usage. If you do a lot of streaming media, and you have a 4K tv, that can use as much as 8gb per Hr.  If you have Amazon Echo/Dot/Alexa, they can periodically go into a listen/transmit loop where every noise it picks up it tries to send it to Amazon for translation as if you are giving commands. I had a friend recently remove all of his amazon equipment, (Dot's Echo's, etc), and his usage dropped over 800gb a month. Sometimes gaming can use a lot of data, it depends on the gaming system and game. Also, change your SSID and WPA key, there is always a possibility that a neighbor is stealing WiFi from you and is using your data. Make sure you are using either WPA2 or WPA3. Using anything else makes it simple for a hacker to get in. If you are using WEP, even I can crack it in less than 30 seconds, (my fingers are getting slow, I used to be able to do it in 15). 

Scan all your devices and verify the software, One forum user had a similar issue to yours, found out he installed one drive on his tablet and it was uploading over 100gb daily. So, check all your devices and ensure they are not doing something similar, as well as running anti virus and anti MALWARE scans on all your devices. 

Yes, same thing is happening here! Since October our data usage has gone way up and we haven’t changed anything. This past billing cycle we used about 80% of our data, but that was bc I checked our data daily, turned our security cameras off and disconnected WiFi whenever possible. Such a pain!! All that monitoring and I still can’t figure out why the occasional high usage. Today I got on the app and discovered that we used over 300gb yesterday. My kids were playing a lot of Fortnite being on Christmas break, but 300gb???!!! 30% of our monthly data used in 1 day??! I called and messaged Cox last month and unfortunately they were no help. 

On Christmas day we used 5 times the normal amount of data. We were gone half the day. I was told by customer service someone must be stealing my wifi- must be half my street! In all seriousness Im not happy. When you look at the categories using data from one month to next there is something clearly wrong. Last cycle I had categories like streaming video, web browsing, gaming etc all with respective % that made sense. This cycle EVERYTHING is under Network Management & Testing. There are no other categories yet Cox is telling me there is nothing wrong? Im looking into other providers. 

I am having the exact same issue since October 2023. I was on vacation when the spike happened and it seemed to have conveniently stopped when I returned home. Everything seemed normal for November, there were a few intermittent spikes in December and January, but in February, the spike started on 2/19 and hasn't stopped since (1.2TB in 13 days so far). I've gotten pretty much the same response from Cox as everyone else. Was hoping to find a solution in these forums but so far nothing.

Is it all network management and testing like mine?