Use of Data?

For 20min, I would not bother, as long as you actually have caught all the automatic updates that could kick off during idle time. I'd me more concerned over longer periods of time or overnight.

If you are using someone else's bandwidth (e.g., RV Park or Starbucks WiFi), you are probably ok unless you have an open connection (non-encrypted). By staying connected, you are giving a hacker a chance to find and exploit your exposed computer.

If you are paying for the bandwidth, (e.g., using an AT&T hotspot or personal WiFi, which connects your air card to the Internet via an LTE base station) and have a monthly data cap (e.g., 6 GB), then leaving it on, especially while connected to a website like this) can really suck down your data. A lot of the banner ads running on websites are data hogs. In that case, I'd download what is needed, then disconnect from the wireless access point. Good luck. Mike

I guess I'm the paranoid type. If I'm not at the keyboard I disconnect. It only takes about a minute to reconnect.

I do all updates, including Windows manually. I like to know what's coming and going on my systems.

Problem with leaving it connected when on sites like CNN or any of the news channels or even your e-mail account they continually transmit update eating up your data limit.

Best to disconnect.

As long as you have OS and app updates disabled, and close your browser, you shouldn't be using any real data. As a precaution, I would also get into the habit of logging off your user account when not at your computer. More of a security precaution.

I was using so much data, and going over every month - so, shut off updates, and auto-start video - then began logging off the hot-spot each time I wasn't actually using it. So, we'll see next month when I get the bill...

Since Windows 7, I've found that my computer is not usually idling when I am not actively using it, virus scans start getting busy and email clients keep running. But I've not tracked down and killed every service that looks for and uses active connections.

If you have Windows 10 be aware that you must stop the updates from automatically downloading. This is not as simple to do as it used to be.There's a discussion about Windows 10 here - http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/28405823/srt/pa/pging/1/page/1

Also we had a problem with a computer that we just bought which has Windows 8.1. It was using quite a bit of data just idling. We found a solution here - http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1855363/hour-idling-windows-windows.html Skip down to the last post.

monkey44 wrote:
So, we'll see next month when I get the bill...

Waiting till you get the bill is too late. Surely you can monitor your data usage with your carrier. If not, you have the wrong carrier. :)

tonyandkaren wrote:
Skip down to the last post.

If you are referring to the poster that found that disabling IPv6 solved their problem, it can only be a temporary solution to whatever the real problem was.

IPv6 simply allows an IP address space big enough to allow the number Internet address to continue to grow (IPv4 is close to its limit). See IPv6: Five Things You Should Know that is a two year old article.