Linux Mint; vnstat will help provide the tale.
What sort of router are you using? Some routers allow for bandwidth monitoring. Does the area you’re located have Cell Phone service? Unlimited data is now very cheap for 4G cell phones.
One possibility to explore, Exede isn’t wrong and the 10GB is getting used.
Just not by you guys.
Also, one can use the wireless card in a desktop as a hotspot and monitor wireless useage in vnstat.
Or get a DD-WRT compatible router, load it up with software and then one can throttle useage by device as needed.
Probably need to turn off all cloud services by in-house devices.
Had a similar issue and found out a couple of new iPhones that were wifi’ed to our satellite service were automatically backing up lots and lots of data to iCloud that didn’t need to be backed up. Changing the phones settings and taking the phones off wifi cured the issue for us. But yeah, we were going thru a month’s worth of data plan in no time at all until the settings were changed.
About 2 years ago now, I noticed my cable internet usage seemed high. The culprit turned out to be a new 10” tablet I used to view sports events. The tablet was consuming 1080p streams while my main widescreen TV was still at 720p.
Each tablet sports event ate around 2 Gb/hr while a movie on the TV consumed around 1 Gb/hr.
Several months later, my cable company changed their metering method and increased the monthly download allocation. Previously it was 250 Gb, then 350 Gb, and now 1 Tb. I typically use between 250 and 350 Gb per month, depending on how many sports events and binge streams I watch.
You might check your devices to see what they are using.
I was surprised that my 10” tablet was using more download data than my 32” widescreen tv.
It’s possible someone is leaching your data. It’s also possible you have a pad or another device using data. That said 10GB is anemic these days. You are unlikely to get away that small of a cap for very long even if it’s 6 days a month.
We live in a rural area but do have a 4G connection. We used these guys successfully for a number of years. http://www.millenicom.com/home/
My parents had a problem with their Android devices using a lot of data updating over their cell connection instead of their home network. But when it comes to data usage for updates... Windows 10 has made all others seem like pikers recently. That is because they had a recent major update and then a bunch of updates for the update.
We ditched cable TV and use Fire and Apple TV boxes to watch all of our favorite shows. On several occasions we have had to physically turn off all of our Windows 10 devices because they were using almost all of our data and making the TV shows freeze. They take updates while they are sleeping and looking completely innocent.
Most likely problem on your side is a rogue app or malware.
If you really don’t think you are knowingly or even unknowingly using your data, ask them to start logging your data transfer and send you reports with the data rates, as well as the top 10 resources that you connect to in terms of data used.
You can and should setup your Windows 10 computers not to update when they are on a “metered connection”. It is easy to do. A simple internet search will give you all the details you need to set this up in a few minutes. It is one redeeming feature that Microsoft included in this bane to computer OS’s.
Change the password on your WiFi.
You might have malware on your puter, acting as a zombie. These programs send and receive massive data in the background.
Download and install antimalwarebytes first. The free version. Let it update. Run a complete (deep) scan. See what it says.
Also ask your provider how much upload data you went through. Should be tiny. If not, Zombie computer.
Microsoft just had a GIANT update recently....your laptop/PC might of been draining your usage without you even knowing it.
If you have access to the router you should be able to reset the byte counters for the outbound interface to zero.
Then periodically check your actual usage.
All you need is the make/model...then look up the manual on the internet to discover how to do this.
You could also call it in as a trouble and insist the provider “fix it”.
If the system is wireless, you MUST set a difficult wireless password and not broadcast the SSID. Somebody may be stealing your bits.
I live in the middle of nowhere.
A mile down a dirt road, and they put in fiber!
I get about 25mbps up and down.
Could go faster but this seems to be OK.
It’s a bit pricey but I get all my TV for free and free long-distance phone so it all works out fine.
10GB!?
I go through that much just booting this mess up.
Put the router where you can see the lights and when they’re flashing for no reason open task manager and see what’s doing it.
For me it always turns out to be a Windows update.
Cell phones doing backups?