How is Verizon suddenly tracking my hot-spot usage on Android and how do I disable this tracking?

I am familiar with how iOS devices report hot spot use by treating it differently somehow. My understand is that Android is not crippled like this, and there is rightly no difference in traffic between hot spot data and data from the phone itself. So I was a bit shocked when I received a text from Verizon telling me I had used up almost all my paltry hot-spot "allowance" because this should not be possible that it discriminates traffic like that. How is this possible? I have used my hotspot a lot before and never received this message. I have read something about an "APN"s but there is only one, "VZWINTERNET" which can only be "reset to default" with no option to delete or create a new one.