Internet Hotspot

If I'm on a public Wi-Fi, I like being on as short a time period as possible, even with the "no incoming traffic" checked on the firewall. Once I'm done, I disconnect.

For Windows updates, I've found it is faster to run "WSUS Offline", which does its business extremely quickly, and you can copy the updates to a USB flash drive and update other Windows boxes without needing to burn up one's bandwidth allotment.

I think there is a utility available for the Mac where you can throttle programs like mail.app so they only use a certain amount of bandwidth at most. I think Little Snitch might offer that functionality.

Sorry, but NOTHING does anything to my computer without me vetting what's updating and why it's necessary. Notify that an update is available, fine. I'll tell you when and what to update. Same for the Verizon Jetpack. When I'm done using ANY internet connection, it's shut off. Paranoid? Perhaps, but there are really people out there that are trying to ruin your day and I don't intend to make it easy for them.

Not only that, but just about every click you make on any site involves someone making money or collecting information on what I do. I don't care to allow that to happen either without my knowing and allowing.

If you are on public WiFi, turn it off when not in use. Do not go to bed and leave it on. You are tempting late night hackers.

I have been using a utility for Mac OS X which allows you to limit internet use to a few selected applications. It's called TripMode. I have it set to allow only my web browser, my spreadsheet, and my iCloud activities (the spreadsheet needs to reference data in the cloud.) It gives a running total of use by the session, the day, and the month.

I discovered that the Mail app is a real data hog, and now use the web interface for gmail and yahoo mail.

This has helped me control background activities which can be superfluous when I'm traveling.

I have no idea about similar utilities for various flavors of Windows.