Extreme increase in data usage

I have had a ton of issues with Data usage, but I haven't found cox at fault.  I have the 1TB + 500GB because I have 3 teenagers in the house that play games on the PC.  What I found was that in some months those games would all have huge updates, like 50GB which would hit all three PCs, so 150GB of usage for just one game.  the Second issue was kids leaving the streams running.  They might log into twitch or something and have that just running in the background while the PC is open.  Usually with full stream, you are talking like 500Kbit per stream times 3600seconds times n hours.  it adds up fast.  Finally the same issue happens when you have a fire stick or other stream stick, they can sometimes keep running even after the TV is turned off.  That, again, can eat up usage.  

My personal solution was to get a router that supports Gargoyle (a version of openWRT:  https://www.gargoyle-router.com/) It allows for FULL visibility and control of your network usage.  Using this, I can track the EXACT amount of data crossing the network and actually pin down who is using the most data.  With this, you can lock out anyone you don't want in the network and you can restrict bandwidth through quotas.  So, for example, this month we are close to hitting the cap....like 40GB away.  So I turned on restrictions.  After 10GB of usage (each day) the available total bandwidth drop to 1Mbit.  Still usable, but harder to share.  After the billing cycle, I just open it back up again.  I've found that Cox is within about 10% of the number that I get from the router.  It's really close.

I can also restrict time of day usage by mac address, so the kids are locked out until certain hours.  It takes a little work, but functionally i like the results.

I have never used more than 350 gigs in a month, but today I received an email that I am approaching my max. I live alone and have never shared my password with anyone. None of my habits have changed since my usage went from a few gigs per day to more than 30 on most days, even on weekends when I have been away. I checked to see which devices have wifi access and all of them are mine: phone, PC, thermostat, security camera (which hasn't even been on) and Ring doorbell. Customer service told me there's no way to determine how much data each device uses, which is not true. I can check Windows to see that my PC used 9.41 gigs, my phone used 26 gigs. The doorbell uses about 200 megs and the thermostat about 50 megs. I do watch Netflix on my Firestick but never more than 10-12 hours/week. Even at the highest resolution, I should not have upped my data usage this much. 

2 months later has anything changed? Because I'm having a similar issue. The only help I got was them suggesting a password change. And after the initial complaint there was maybe 3 days of minimal usage to make it look like it was fixed before it kicked back up to at least 20gbs a day. I've almost hit 70gbs in a day more than a few times with absolutely no change in routine. 

These last few days (of my data cycle) I may as well of had the router off. When the data hit 85% I used nothing but my dvd player and consistently switched back and forth from my mobile data to avoid heavy usage; but even then I had apparently used almost 20gbs a day by my father streaming tv from an underground 3rd party app for maybe 4-5hrs (that we've had for months before this mess started, so it can't be that.) I even unplugged anything that could of been streaming wifi just in case.

I don't have cable, so I use the amazon firestick, like I have been for 12+ months I've used Cox, and this started maybe 4 months ago. Of course, right after my "promotion" ended (that I had no knowledge of) and they had already jacked up my bill by almost $30 without warning.

But before this I rarely ever hit the 85% mark; and my last 2 bills got a very sudden last-minute spike in data usage within the last 24hrs of my bill being due. Just enough to go over. And of course, not without a notice that it had until maybe, at least, 10 hours after the cycle actually ended.

Paying $100 a month for internet, and have to stress about data use. This is ridiculous. Everyone who pays for additional data are encouraging this kind of bad business. As soon as an alternative comes around (5g maybe), I'm getting out of this extortion of service. 

Paying $100 a month for internet, and have to stress about data use. This is ridiculous. Everyone who pays for additional data are encouraging this kind of bad business. As soon as an alternative comes around (5g maybe), I'm getting out of this extortion of service. 

Yes I have seen increases in data usage as well. For no reason. Like crazy increase. I monitor it everyday. I have to limit everything I do so I don't go over my limit and have to pay unfair overage fees. This is what a monopoly looks like folks.