Does plusnet long what devices have been connected and how much data it used?
Executive summary
Plusnet’s customer-facing routers can show which devices are currently connected and report per-device data counters for the period the hub has been powered on or since the device connected, but the ISP does not provide customers with a long-term, historic monthly breakdown of per-device bandwidth usage through its public account tools — and Plusnet appears to have stopped routinely recording and storing monthly usage after the shift to “unlimited” products (forum reporting) [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the home router exposes: device lists and short-term counters
Users of Plusnet-supplied hubs can log into the router’s local web interface (typically 192.168.1.254) and view a “My devices” or network page that lists connected devices and shows data sent/received counters — for example the Hub Two exposes per-device totals since the device connected or since the hub was last booted, and the technical log records “Data sent / received” entries that reset on disconnect/reconnect [1] [2] [3].
2. What Plusnet the company keeps and shares: limited, not long-term per-device history
Multiple community posts from Plusnet’s own forum indicate there is no customer-facing means to retrieve a historical bandwidth utilisation history, and that Plusnet staff can sometimes provide limited information (such as indications of when a connection was active or a “visual radius log”) but not comprehensive per-device monthly breakdowns retained indefinitely [5] [4]. The shift to unlimited plans is repeatedly cited by forum members as the reason ISPs, including Plusnet, stopped storing customers’ detailed monthly usage histories [4].
3. Variations between hub models and practical limits
Capabilities vary by hub model: older routers or third‑party kit may have supported per-address counters over longer spans, while Plusnet’s Hub One and Hub Two are more locked down — Hub Two gives short-term counters accessible via local pages and technical logs, but those counters can be reset by power cycles or reconnects, limiting their usefulness as a continuous historical record [6] [2] [3].
4. Workarounds, transparency and the role of support staff
Forum contributors note that savvy users can capture DNS logs or run a local monitor (for example a Raspberry Pi DNS logger) to create a separate history of lookups and, indirectly, device activity; however that is a user-managed side project, not a Plusnet service [7]. Some posters also report that Plusnet staff have in isolated cases extracted connection activity data for customers, but such assistance appears ad hoc and limited rather than a formal, customer-accessible archive [5] [4].
5. Privacy and profiling concerns raised by users
Beyond raw counters, community threads record user anxiety about what Plusnet may collect for “TV records” or profiling purposes, with references to privacy-policy language describing device and viewing details; these concerns show users conflate device-level counters with broader company data practices, but the forum material does not document a public, systematic per-device long-term logging service offered to customers [8].
6. Bottom line and what remains uncertain
The bottom line from Plusnet’s community-sourced reporting: the local Plusnet hub will show which devices are connected and short-term data usage since the last boot or connection and the ISP can, in limited circumstances, pull connection activity logs, but there is no regular, customer-accessible archival of per-device monthly data usage retained by Plusnet as a standard service — and firm, official statements from Plusnet on exact retention policies and what staff can provide in specific cases are not present in the quoted forum material, so that detail remains unconfirmed by the provided sources [1] [2] [5] [4].