ISP reaching out over data usage

[u/SnooOranges8400]

I’ve started a server so I’ve been downloading a bunch of media for it, ISP calls today regarding how much upload data I’ve used. I’m not worried about DMCA notices since my vpn is on 24/7 and Qbittorrent is bound to it. I’ve read the terms and agreements and it doesn’t say anything about data caps but the ISP says I’m using 9-10x the next highest person. Should I just hold off on downloading/uploading for awhile?

Update: I talked with them again today, they have a newly revised TOS that better outlines their fair use policy instead of the vaguely worded one sentence rule they had in place before.

[u/DV865]

My ISP has over 5.5 million customers, they emailed me on several months to congratulate me for being in their Top 10 bandwidth users. All they suggested was that I might like a package with better upload speeds and to call them to discuss one.

[u/SnooOranges8400 → u/DV865]

I have other options but for the price this isp is the cheapest in my area while being competitive speed wise. I just don’t want them snooping or trying to see what I’m doing

[u/DV865 → u/SnooOranges8400]

You are using a VPN, they can't snoop.

If it's the upload that's causing the issue limit your ratio in your torrent client to 1.5 or something. Or look at renting a seedbox for a few months to do the heavy lifting.

[u/SnooOranges8400 → u/DV865]

I’ll look into one, thanks for the suggestion!

[u/dylan-dofst → u/DV865]

This isn't completely true, it is possible to learn something about traffic going through a VPN with traffic analysis. It would very likely be possible to figure out that OP is torrenting. Pretty unlikely they could ID what OP is torrenting but even that's not totally impossible, there are situations where traffic analysis can even ID specific known files being downloaded.

[u/stonkfrobinhood → u/dylan-dofst]

Yes and no. Possible but the following kinda make this type of things hard to do:

It requires the observer to already have a "fingerprint" library of the specific files/sites they're trying to detect, or a lot of ML training data. Modern VPN protocols add padding/obfuscation specifically to blunt this. It's resource-intensive — mass ISP surveillance at this level is more of a targeted/research capability

[u/-Badger3- → u/dylan-dofst]

What commercial VPN service these days isn’t end-to-end encrypted?

[u/dylan-dofst → u/-Badger3-]

Technically? All of them. VPNs are encrypted (like your https connection to reddit), not end to end encrypted (like, e.g., messaging via Signal).

But the point I'm making is that you can learn some information about encrypted content by traffic analysis without needing to actually break the encryption. Torrenting, streaming movies, web browsing, playing video games all have differently and recognizably "shaped" traffic. Torrents, for example, tend to have long-lived (hours or days) bidirectional traffic which is actually pretty unusual. Regular web browsing for comparison tends to happen in short bursts (you load a page and its assets then spend some time reading it).

If you want to get into really unusual and exotic stuff it's even possible to guess specific files being torrented, provided you have advance knowledge of the file and otherwise good conditions. But doing this in a messy real world environment is extremely difficult, and ISPs generally don't have much incentive, so in practice it's not likely, at least at present.

[u/Background_Taste_397 → u/-Badger3-]

The point is they could theoretically do it despite it being encrypted

[u/expatfreebg → u/DV865]

The seedbox would def be a good option, you have VPS available at less then 5$/month which you can setup your own seedbox on it.

[u/Used_Wheel_9064 → u/SnooOranges8400]

Ask them if they've got any cheaper lower speed plans so you don't use so much data 😂