It seems that using the vpn forces my phone to use hotspot data instead of regular mobile data. This has caused me to use up all of my Hotspot data in a matter of minutes, and now my speeds are throttled down to practically nothing when using the vpn. But when I turn off the vpn, it goes back to using regular mobile data again and speeds are back to normal.
I recently changed phones from s21 ultra to s24 ultra and finally got around to installing nordvpn on this new phone. I also manually renewed my vpn subscription just now, as it just happened to expire about a week ago as I was upgrading phones.
This weird problem renders the vpn completely worthless, and unless I can find a fix to this issue, I will need to try to get a refund.
I did some digging and it turns out that it is most likely a bug involving esim cards. I just now stepped out of a T Mobile store and replaced my esim with a physical one.
That seemed to fix the problem as it’s no longer going off hotspot data and now correctly going off normal mobile data. Granted it’s only about 150 mb instead of 550, but I’m assuming that is normal for most vpns anyway.
I guess I don’t know if Mint does this for me or not, because I don’t have an unlimited plan, and so it’s the same. How do they decide that the data use is hotspot use? Like does the phone tell the somehow? Or like if I stream NPR from my phone to the car via Bluetooth, vs if I hotspot the car and stream the same app on the car, how does it actually look different?
This varies widely frol ISP to ISP.
But usually when ISPs separate hot-spot and mobile phone data it’s just so you pay more ironically.
You have to ask your ISP but I think they separate identified mobile data and unidentified rest data, and because a VPN encrypts your data they cannot see it’s mobile data so they put it with the rest, aka hotspot data
this makes so much more sense now, used to stay connected to a NORDVPN server all the time and It would run through my Hotspot data in about 2 weeks and have 50 GB of hotspot data. I may only use the VPN for wifi networks IDK. But your comment about T-Mobile not being able to tell what mobile data and hot spot data are makes sense because they are encrypted.