I asked several different chatbots if network carriers were able to tell hotspot data vs regular if it was hidden with a VPN and all of the explanations sounded like bullshit. Stuff about doing traffic pattern analysis and looking at TTL stamps, which wouldn't even be visible if you are routing traffic through wireguard from your phones connection.

How the fuck could they possibly tell it was hotspot data if the traffic is being routed over your PHONES wireguard connection?
@RustyCrab Traffic pattern analysis is legit. Of course, it's possible to mask your traffic depending on how you use it, just make sure you don't have steam open or whatever, but chances are if they actually threw a neural net at it, they'd get >80% accuracy.
I doubt any American ISP gives half a fart, because America is a third-world country where they can just control it via the fone's OS.
@Zergling_man the situation is simple
my phone traffic and my laptop traffic are both routed through my phones VPN. As far as I can tell, they share the same IP and the same connection and they are both encrypted by wireguard.

If my carrier can do DPS on that, something is fucked with wireguard no?

This is the most coherent answer I have found so far, but again, this would be masked by wireguard

@RustyCrab @Zergling_man
They indeed shouldn't be able to tell apart traffic inside the VPN tunnel are you certain that your phone's own traffic isn't detected as tethered when it's using the VPN connection for its own traffic?

@m0xee @Zergling_man I can never be 100% certain but it would be quite shocking if Calyx offered up that information voluntarily.

If you're asking if the phones normal traffic by itself is tethered... no way. I got far over my tether data limits every month with regular data so I would know by now.
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@RustyCrab @Zergling_man
I've always wanted to figure out how it works myself, but my current carrier doesn't discern them and provides me with a unified plan that I can use both from the phone and from devices connected to it — and it's pretty generous, considering that I barely leave the house, I never run out.
Yeah, my best guess is that phone isn't your friend in this scenario and marks this traffic itself, but I wonder how that is even possible if you're using a VPN connection 🤷

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