Our family lives in the middle of nowhere, so the only high-speed internet available is Verizon's 3G mobile broadband. We have the highest package available, yet continually go over the 10GB limit and get charged $10 every 1GB we go over. We run a business from home, so stopping when we hit the limit is not an option.
I've found the majority of connections are to Google, Microsoft, Akamai, Facebook, and other web service companies (mainly google). I know these are harmless connections, but when it costs money for them to monitor our web activity it becomes a serious problem.
Here's some things I've done, but I'm sure there's something else that could help before blocking a huge set of IP ranges:
stopped using windows (on my machine)
use MVPS host file on all computers
use firefox on all computers (with don't track me option)
ad block plugin on all browsers
blocking google updates
blocking windows updates
block images in browsers (when possible)
use comodo (paranoia-level style of blocking..)
virus-free computers with ESET NOD32
bought router and installed dd-wrt in attempt to block connections more diligently (and throttle bandwidth if it comes to that)
Anything I'm missing? I know Google analytics is on almost all websites, as well as FB like buttons but I would like to be able to stop these connections without blocking use of google services like gmail, etc.
Any ideas?
