Data Leakage with Three Dongle

I have an Acer Aspire One 532. It came with Windows Live pre-installed.

I also have a Three S2 phone which could access the Internet and had various apps. pre-installed, these included RSS feeds, and Facebook. I noticed with the S2 that there was an amount of data leakage in that my small top-up Internet allowance was going down by the day. I discovered that this was due to Facebook being left open and logged in and continually being updated by all the inane comments from so-called 'friends.' I closed that down. But the leakage continued. I then discovered that by default there were various RSS feeds set to be live such as BBC News, Sky Sports, etc. I closed all of those down and the leakage stopped.

With my AAO 532 - and having ditched my BT landline many years ago (and saved a fortune), my main Internet access is now via a Three dongle (£15 a month for 5Gb), and Pret/McD. wifi. And using a data traffic monitor I noticed that there is a constant stream of uploading and downloading even when not browsing a web page. And I wasn't seeding or snatching anything using a torrent app. Then someone suggested that it might be a RSS feed or more to do with Windows Live. So I started up Windows Live Mail. And opening this up and there they all were - RSS feeds from the NHS, Microsoft (predictably), and some news service. And even though I do not use Windows Live (well only the Movie Maker app.) these damned feeds had been soaking up my data allowance. They have now ALL been deleted. The netbook and dongle is still leaking data - mainly uploads for some reason - but its not as bad as it was.

I guess its not only Three's dongles that leak, other telcos dongles must have the same defaults of allowing RSS feeds etc.

Take care - CJB.