Unknown data usage early morning

I use the phone very rarely. I basically only use data on the phone a few times in the morning, on my way to work. And then again in the evening, on my way home from work. Throughout the day, I don't touch it. Now a few kbs here and there is fine, but that doesn't seem like what's happening.

No. To recap, during the time I was posting, I was at home and on wi-fi. I don't have visual voicemail. I had reset the stats to zero at midnight, and network data was continually being sent and received when the phone was not being used at all. It was the middle of the night. I rarely use the network for data (like I said, I've used a TOTAL of 360mb in the past YEAR), and never when I'm at home. Yet network data is continually ringing up. No push, no fetch, no notifications, no app syncs, no 3G, no web pages open.

I'm not quite sure I really understand your question, because it doesn't relate to anything I've posted.

It should be noted that in my case, I'm showing 3G access on days when I'm not even using the phone. Since getting my iPad, I haven't been using the phone all that much and certainly not for anything that is transferring as much Data as AT&T is showing on my Billing - the reason I was wanting to downgrade the data plan.

As a test, I ran iHeart Radio over 3G for 5 hours just to see how much data is used. This data usage showed up as a separate event on my billing, separate from these phantom usage events that are occurring daily.

Kenny

Message was edited by: KennyGardner

Wow, seeing this as well but for me it's 11~11:30pm. Definitely not using the phone at these times:

06/08 11:25 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5085KB
06/07 11:35 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 19058KB
06/06 11:57 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5115KB
06/05 11:37 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2783KB
06/04 11:21 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 40173KB
06/03 11:04 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 16210KB
06/02 11:26 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4635KB
06/01 11:42 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1127KB

Wow
I'm located in Hong Kong and I have had the same problem.

I've been going through this thread and I guess I'm the only one internationally that's facing this problem.

It started in April. My service is with CSL 1010 and my plan allows me 300mb a month. I got my 3GS when it first came out for I've been using it for almost a year now. My data usage has been quite consistent, ranging from 100-150mb per month. Suddenly for April, my bill showed that I've used 600mb! My bill doesn't show the data activity so I've been pushing CSL to have that printed out for me, but it seems like, with any mobile service courier, they're slow. My May bill came and the data usage pretty much tripled what my plan allows me to use, 900mb.

My boyfriend uses the same courier, he got his 3GS the same time as me and uses his data more than me (around 200mb to 300mb) but he did not see this spike in his bill.

Seems like this issue has only been occur recently. Although I'm half way around the world, I would like to know what is going on cause my service provider cannot give me answers.

So since I turned every single Fetch/Push notification off, here is my mystery usage the last three nights:

06/10 03:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 598KB
06/10 02:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1KB
06/09 02:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 868KB

So, it seems that the phone itself sends from 1KB to 1MB with no Fetch/Push each night. I can then assume that each of my four email accounts on my iPhone which had Fetch/Push on were individually sending roughly the same amounts each. This would put my usage in the 1MB to 5MB range that I was seeing before I turned everything off. My mystery usage was in the 7MB to 10MB range before I turned off my Pocket Informant calendar/todo auto syncing.

For some of you seeing much higher numbers, I am guessing you have MobileME and/or some other calendar/email/server syncing software that is bloating your data usage?

I'm going to watch my numbers for the next week and will keep posting my results. I might downgrade to the 200MB data pricing plan if the transfers stay less than 1MB.

Another set of odd transmissions for me...

06/10 03:09 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 20620KB
06/10 02:23 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 108KB
06/10 06:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 297KB

From 2PM to 3PM yesterday, I was on a conference call at my desk. I don't use my iPhone while at my desk as I have my laptop and my ipad. In addition, my 3G signal is fairly weak at my desk. I left my office at 3PM and headed down into the building's GARAGE. No signal in the elevator and no signal in the garage. I highly doubt I would have been sending / receiving 20MB of data in the 46 minute period between 2:20PM and 3:09PM.

I feel compelled to respond to this thread after my personal experience. My inexplicable data usage began around June 3-5. I am located in Canada. My data consumption was around 120MB per day, and in reality I was only using about 8-9MB. Since I am diligent to check usage, I was shocked to notice this. Checking my email cost me 50MB! Something was seriously wrong and my provider was of no help. Fortunately, an Apple Genius and myself figured out the problem. I want to say outright that I do not wish to defame or cast blame on the website responsible for this bug. Also, we were able to duplicate this on any iPhone. The Genius at Apple said he had never seen anything like it and data consumption was at a rate of 10MB per second of internet activity. Leaving Macrumors.com open in a Safari tab (even though Safari had been quit) was the source. Every time data was passed through the 3G network, this page was refreshing in the background. The Genius said that it was possible that some applet was refreshing on that page. This only happened when Macrumors was loaded. I am a big fan of this particular site, but I have not visited it on the phone as I am over my usage for the month. If anyone with a generous data plan wants to correlate my story, give it a shot. Check your data usage on the phone, open Macrumors.com in Safari and allow it load. Close Safari and check your usage in settings. Go back to the home screen and wait about 10-15 seconds. Now open your settings and check again. If this bug exists still, you will be shocked. Remember to close that tab and leave Safari on a blank white page to stop this. Some people reading this may think I am full of it and that is okay. I was treated like an idiot by my service provider until I showed it to them myself. Only Apple support took it seriously and they helped me solve the problem. This issue was reported by the Apple Store and my service provider through tech support. I went out of my way to do so and I didn't even get a thank you from my Telco. At the end of the day it is my fault for leaving tabs open in Safari. Always leave a blank page on Safari when quitting it. Apple native apps do run in the background. If this helps even one of you, I am glad that I posted it. Mac heads watch each other's backs and that is why we are here. To the moderators of this forum, I hope that I am not out of line in naming the website. Please forgive me if I have violated any terms of service.

whoa!
might be something that forces a page refresh from time to time, thus if this bug is around, it should not be limited to macrumors. Very strange, though.

This, however, does not answer the fact that users are being charged at the same times. Unless, of course, these charges are daily usage, and the phones have been, throughout the day, refreshing said page. Maybe AT&T has some sort of chaotic data usage, or they simply add all the http net usage at the end of the day, and app usage throughout the day?

Anyways, should be easy enough to test, for whomever has these problems, just close all safari pages!

I always close Safari pages before exiting; any site that does automatic updates can cause data usage whether Safari is open or not. Other examples include major news sites (CNN, NYTimes, WSJ, etc). This is a common cause of premature battery depletion also.

Sorry MightyMac but I do not see this at all. The first time, loading from scratch, my phone received 915K bytes and stayed there. The second time I just hit refresh the page and it received 127K bytes and stayed there, presumably because it had some stuff cached. Something else is going on with you.

Maybe folks can list the sites that are open in tabs in Safari. Perhaps a common denominator can be found. It was by pure luck the Apple Genius and I found this as I was just replicating my daily habits. It could be other sites or the data handling of these sites that are causing the problem. Checking my usage also showed times when I was not on my phone. Since leaving a blank page in Safari, I have had no further issues. Best of luck.

I agree, I don't understand the "roll-up" explanation. If the roll-up was a duplicate of all the webpages, email, texts, etc that you ran through for the day, that might explain the size of the transfers, but that kind of recording of activity is well into the privacy invasion territory.
If roll-up is more like a web log, or bytes transferred count then the size should be very small, a few 100K at most.

Last night, I turned off the 3G after finishing everything for the day. Turned phone on in am, cleared usage stats, turned on 3G, left it in the charger.

At noon, I checked it again. 28 kbs sent. Nothing being done. Fetch is still manual. Only change was turning the 3G back on.

If 3G is on, the phone seems to find the micro cell before it finds my WiFi, so there's a tiny exchange (1-3 kb).

I think this may be as low as I can get these phantom "where am I?" transfers.

I had tried several pages one by one. The lone culprit was Macrumors.com. I feel for all of you with this problem because the source is obviously different than mine. Nevertheless, it is disconcerting and I was ready to smash my beloved iPhone out of frustration. Luckily for me, I have been able to figure it out and my overages this month will only be a few dollars.