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I have 4G Internet USB and I was wondering if using a VPN will prevent my ISP from seeing the quota usage.

I know that using a VPN on a cable internet won't achieve this because the switches of the ISP counts every byte sent and received through my cable.

But what about 4G internet?

NOTE: I am not talking about preventing my ISP from seeing my internet activity, but I mean prevent my ISP from counting the bytes I send and receive.

Can using a VPN prevent my ISP from seeing data usage in 4G internet?

Moab
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Mario
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    Data is data, the answer is No. No way to do what you want. – Moab Feb 01 '20 at 13:22
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    The ISP can still track the amount of data you're sending/receiving from the VPN. It shouldn't know what you are doing though. – Natsu Kage Feb 01 '20 at 13:25
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    The [answer from Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=does+vpn+use+extra+data) is that using a VPN will actually use *more* data. – Mokubai Feb 01 '20 at 17:31
  • Data is data, your ISP only count bytes for billing purposes, no matter what the protocol being used. Is some essential detail missing in the question that might make you believe otherwise? – Rui F Ribeiro Feb 03 '20 at 11:51
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    With one mobile ISP I was on, data on port 53 (that's normally DNS) didn't count towards the cap at all. They fixed that by blocking anything that wasn't legitimate DNS traffic about a year later. – Jonas Czech Feb 03 '20 at 15:11

1 Answers1

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The VPN encrypts your traffic, but the amount of information that is sent and received will stay the same. This is not affected by the fact that you are on a mobile connection.

Depending on the encryption protocol that is used, it might even increase your data usage, but only by a (very) small margin.

In short: No, a VPN can never hide your data throughput, because the data still has to get to and from your phone. And on its way, it goes through your ISPs infrastructure, which you are paying for.

If you are concerned about privacy, using a VPN is useful regardless. But be aware that some VPN providers collect data about your behavior or will significantly slow your connection and increase latency - especially free providers.

lukasgabriel
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    If anything the amount of data will *increase* slightly by using a VPN, due to the extra layer encapsulating the actual data you push through it. [One site](https://www.vpnuniversity.com/learn/does-a-vpn-use-data-can-a-vpn-unlock-data-caps) estimates the increase at anywhere between 10 and 20%, which can be significant on a low data cap. – Mokubai Feb 01 '20 at 17:27
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    It is possible for a VPN to mask actual data usage, but only by having the VPN end points send consistently large packets when real data is not being transmitted, and by ensuring that any smaller real packets get padded. Suffice to say, this will radically increase data usage. – Randall Feb 02 '20 at 14:29
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    Also note that some VPNs can compress data (only data that is not already compressed or encrypted - like plaintext HTTP, IMAP, NNTP or SMTP traffic; but not HTTPS, TLS, HTTP+gzip etc.), which might also make traffic somewhat smaller. For example [OpenVPN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVPN) can use `comp-lzo` option to compress data if enabled on both sides. So you can't hide that you've transferred data, but in some cases you could transfer less data that you would without VPN. – Matija Nalis Feb 02 '20 at 15:20
  • So is it fair to say that your ISP will see 40 megabytes going to and from your phone, but *where/how they originated* is unknown? – BruceWayne Feb 02 '20 at 16:30
  • @MatijaNalis - good point. Many mobile browsers can also do this via a "data saver" option. – lukasgabriel Feb 02 '20 at 17:04
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    @BruceWayne Assuming your VPN is not leaking DNS queries to your ISP, it will see the traffic as being in between your device and the VPN's servers. – lukasgabriel Feb 02 '20 at 17:06
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    @lukasgabriel yeah, so it just seems the *amount* of traffic between my phone and a VPN, as if all traffic was just visiting 123.45.67.89 (let's say that's the VPN ip) but it doesn't see that I went to Google, stack overflow, etc. – BruceWayne Feb 02 '20 at 17:52
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    @BruceWayne your ISP doesn't see which sites you visit, but your VPN provider **does**. So it's just changing who sees the data. Unless you set up your own VPN. Also woth noting is that a VPN might stop you from using your ISP's exemptions, like Facebook or Netflix not counting towards data usage. – jaskij Feb 02 '20 at 20:46
  • With some bad luck it counts even more than your real data .. because of sometimes used 8/10 encoding (8 data-bits -> 10 transfer-bits) - this is the 10..20 % increase mentioned by @Mokubai – eagle275 Feb 03 '20 at 14:27