Prey using a lot of bandwidth on initial internet connect

[meeotch]

I posted this over at the community, but no replies, so I thought maybe this was the more appropriate forum:

I’m currently tethering my Windows 10 laptop (which has Prey installed) through my phone (which does not) in an area with little internet service, and so I have a data cap of about 500MB/day to worry about. I’ve noticed that every time I connect the laptop to the internet, the Prey executable seems to be up or downloading a large (50-100MB) amount of data.

How do I know it’s Prey? By using the Task Manager, sorted by network activity. I see the node.exe process running from the Prey install directory at the top of the list for several seconds following the connect, and I watch the data usage on my phone jump by 50-100MB. After the Prey process is done accessing the network, data usage slows to a trickle.

I've confirmed by stopping the Prey Cron Service, killing wpxsvc.exe and node.exe, and then connecting to the tether. Usage in that case was < 10MB. Unfortunately, I'm limited in the amount of testing I can do - because data cap.

This has happened several times over the past couple of days, so I don’t think it’s Prey downloading new versions. Is there something else that it does when a connection is first established that would be this heavy? And more to the point: is there a way of stopping it, without killing Prey altogether?