Unknown data usage early morning

Dear OrinialDiode:

Onavo and Dataman Pro both record the data sent/received by application -- to help you find apps that are 'data hogs'. I purchased both, and they were invaluable in negotiations with AT&T when we found unusual data charges.

A class action suit was filed against AT&T in 2011, alleging erroneous billing. See:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20030151-94.html

Mark Hays

It got dropped because the service agreement disallowed class action suits.

Here's the scoop on the lawsuit: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/31/33742.htm

And the scoop on the result, brought to you by the Supreme Court in 2011:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-57403475-266/why-you-cant-sue-your-wireless-ca rrier-in-a-class-action/

XtremeArtists wrote:

Lawrence, you are wrong. That is why Apple just pushed an update for iPhone 5 on Verizon. This is a new behavior introduced by IOS 6. You add nothing but misinformation to this thread.

He is correct. The iPhone will disconnect from wi-fi when not plugged in to the Apple supplied power supply as soon as it goes to lock, or sleep mode. This is intended to save power. It has been this way since about iOS 4.3,at least.

I stumbled upon this thread while trying to find out how my data plan would fare...

Just want to share what i do to make sure my Cellular Data is controlled.

General/Settings/Cellular/Cellular Data/APN...

I don't know what APN means, but it shows my provider's internet gateway or something. I modify it a little, like ommitting the last letters. Then i know for sure Cellular Data will not work.

Has anyone tried this?

I'm in the UK and am experiencing this problem too, it seems my data spikes every time the clock strikes midnight. I didn't know this before as I had 3 months unlimited data usage but now I don't I got an alert saying I was close to my limit dispite rarely using my phone. I checked my previous bills at it seems it has done this since the day I got my phone

Anyone know if restoring to factory settings fixes it?

To GoBlueDJ and others with the 'data charges in the middle of the night' problem:

The problem with large data charges in the middle of the night has been documented extensively on this board. In a nutshell:

> AT&T tech support managers told me and others that their accounting system "rolls up" charges logged through various antenna points throughout the day, and an aggregate charge is posted around midnight. This explanation should be taken with a big grain of salt, however. (See below.)

> We repeatedly encountered the problem on our son's iPhone. Data charges were even billed when he was in the hospital, with the iPhone powered down and unused.

> If you diplomatically dispute the charges, and escalate to a supervisor if needed, AT&T will often issue a refund. It is very helpful to have third-party usage reports to back up your argument, from an independent 'data monitor' app like DataMan Pro or Onavo.

> The most reliable solution: disable cell service from 11pm to 1am. The quickest and easiest option is turning on "airplane mode". If you turn off cell service only, make sure the iPhone is plugged into a charger. If not, it will automatically revert to a cellular connection when it goes to sleep. If you disable cellular service around midnight, the big midnight data charges simply vanish. They do not reappear at a later time. (So much for AT&T's explanation.)

> Also watch for hidden 'data hog' apps with your data monitor app. We found, for example, that the TextFree app pushes ad images that can add up -- even if you buy the 'paid' option. (This simply hides the ads; all of the data still hits your account.) Any kind of video is a killer, e.g. YouTube, movies, video chat, etc. Our son did not appreciate the exponential difference in data consumption, compared to music -- until we walked through some examples.

I hope this is helpful.

Mark

I just discovered there's something downloading 100 MB /day all of a sudden for past 10 days with no new apps or anything, got warning msgs that i'm almost over 1 gb limit, this is Telus Montreal, Canada. Strange that it's download not upload like most here. If i had old dataman where per app bytes is supported would be glad, if you have that app which is now removed, guard it closely and i'm jealous! I do have iDataUsage which indeed reports 1100mb download, this all happened while the phone was sitting plugged in and not used at all, zip, nada, almost forgot about it, wifi on router is only turned on when needed in case there's any truth to the waves causing mental disturbances or whatever. Phone was used mainly for making apps which are completed for now.

So turned off cell data till next cycle, also got rid of iCloud, backup etc wasn't setup but who knows, still a suspect. Telus doesn't want to talk much about refunds because i'm over by such small amount, but still ~20 bucks or whatever, i'm unpleased to pay, and will call again if i do see much of an extra charge. Wish me luck right?

I'm back, after 5 visits to Apple because my daughter's iPhone wouldn't stay connected to our WiFi and having them replaced, and a brand new cellular service! This is what I found out. Some iPhones have trouble staying connected to WiFi when in the house. I piggybacked a router upstairs for better coverage. This did not help my daughter's iPhone from accessing the internet almost hourly under AT&T, when she finally got an iPhone that would stay connected. These hourly sends were being done even while she slept. I turned my cellular data off and my other daughter's Samsung stayed connected to the WiFi when she was in the house. Funny and also disturbing, these charges have disappeared from the online billing, since I cancelled their service.

After getting POed at AT&T's Customer Service, I started to check around for a new carrier, somebody suggested Sprint and I researched it a bit, so we switched to Verizon. The results: Verizon's coverage service is not as good as AT&T's in this "immediate" area. We have three bars versus five. The first Motorola they gave me had 1 bar, if even. They took it back the next day and gave me an iPhone, which has a consistant 3 bars. I told both kids to USE their phones like they wanted to and not to restrict their usage and I would watch the data usage. My oldest with the iPhone works 8 hours a day outside of the house. She incurs some data usage as she likes to send iPhone messages versus regular text messages (which we have unlimited and unlimited calling). In 10 days, there has been .118 gigs of our 2 gig plan used. I just checked her service and when she sleeps there is no activity being done on her phone and she does not turn it off. She has downloaded all of her normal apps, games for her and her 4 yo daughter, etc., Sunday when she was home for most of the day, there were two usages. Monday through Friday there were no more than a dozen a day, all while she was awake. Her iPhone is not doing anything at night through Verizon. Now my other daughter's Samsung which was sending data to AT&T hourly too, except when she was in the house and connected to WiFi, is no longer making those sends either. Yes, when she is outside she does incur usage charges but they are not hourly, usually when she is using the phone for something. She has been in the house for the last two days and has had no data charges since 2/2 (today is 2/5).

So in my humble opinion, all that 'sending' while sleeping was due to AT&T and not 'just because' we had a smart phone and/or an iPhone.

Just wanted to post my own personal solution to this problem. I'm sure it may work for some and not for others.

My daughter's iPhone 4 was exhibiting this phantom data usage issue. Data was being sent during the wee hours of the night and while she was in school during the day. On one occasion (a weekend), she was driving with me and I know she was not sending a large file.

First thing I did was contact AT&T. They were good enough to refund me the overage charge for the month of January. They also suggested I see the Geniuses at the Apple Store to figure out what was going on.

What I did instead was to install a data monitoring app on the iPhone and change the Mail fetch settings to manual from push.

That did the trick. Data consumption is way down and huge file transfers, especially at oddball times of the day, are completely eliminated. My daughter has a 200Mb plan (running from the 2nd of the month) and is only now at about the 140Mb mark, with only 4 days left to go. Its only been one month, but things are definitely looking like they're moving in the right direction. I'll post back if anything changes.

Good luck to all of you: I know this is frustrating!

I am having the same problem. Large amounts of data being sent when I am not using the phone. Did anyone have an answer? I am scrolling through the comments but have not seen a solution yet. Thanks.

Are you seeing large "data sent" on your carrier's bill, or on the phone? If it's on the bill that's because ALL data is reported as "sent" by most carrier billing systems. If you see it on the phone it is more significant.

Thank you. That's helpful to know. The time the data is "sent" (or received as the case may be) is generally when I am not using the phone and does not seem to correlate to the amount of data used outside of wifi.

You haven't read enough of the thread yet. The timestamps are meaningless; they are the time accumulated usage from each network switch was reported to the billing system. So each entry could be up to 24 hours of data. A switch reports your usage as a lump sum when you travel outside of the jurisdiction of the switch. the switch you are connected to at 12 AM PST closes out your connection at that time, so an entry with a time stamp of shortly after that time is to be expected.

Also, WiFi is off when the phone is asleep, unless the phone is connected to power. This is done to save battery, but it means that you may not be connected to WiFi when you think you are.

Hello All!

I posted a number of times on this problem over the past 18 months; our son's iPhone was repeatedly hit with massive data charges that arrived around midnight. Please see my previous messages, which explain how you can avoid this problem -- and receive an adjustment to your bill from AT&T.

Lawrence Finch has been very helpful, with his knowledge of the cellular industry, technical details and billing processes.

We just ran into a new wrinkle that everyone should be aware of. Our son puts his iPhone into 'airplane' mode every night, to avoid the midnight data charges. For the past four months, this eliminated the problem. In March, however, he suddenly blew through the 3 Gb data limit -- in less than two weeks. We subscribed to Dataman Pro and Onavo, and both show ~1Gb of data usage.

Clearly, something is going on. Maybe the mysterious 'midnight data charges' have become 'any time of the day' data charges. I will let everyone know when we get to the bottom of this latest twist.

Mark Hays

Personally, I think it is an AT&T problem and not an iPhone problem. Why?

History: We had AT&T and were getting these charges, my daughter's iPhone especially. Hourly charges were occurring when she was out of house or the phone went to sleep. My other daughter's Samsung got them when she was out of the house, away from the WiFi. The iPhone would not REconnect to the WiFi on its own. My iPhone had no problem. So after visiting Apple about six times, they fixed this problem. She still had hourly charges occurring, though. I shut the data off on my phone, 99% of the time it sits ontop of the WiFi router.

I then got POed at AT&T's customer service, so we switched to Verizon. We got two iPhones (4S and 4) and one Samsung. I told both kids to use the phones as much as they wanted or was usual, put all their apps on,let my 5 yo granddaughter play. I flipped my data back on and watched the bill.

Guess what? When we go to sleep so do the phones! Looking at her data use from the 11th, she had two entries, at 7:04 a.m. and 7:04 p.m., approximate total of 1,000 kb. For the 12th, first at 7:04 a.m. until 8:33 p.m., 13th first was 8:31 a.m., last 3:02 p.m. (only 2). For the 14th, again only two, 2:02 a.m. and 1:02 p.m. The 15th was two also, 6:04 a.m. and 11:24 p.m. The 16th were a bunch (she was texting a lot), the first at 6:05 a.m. and last 10:07 p.m. and the 17th was 9:49 a.m. and 6:49 p.m. Oddly enough, there were none for the 18th. Now, she works outside of the house, so her phone is basically alseep most of the weekdays, as well as at night when she sleeps. She wakes around 5:30 on weekdays.

You can draw your own conclusions, but I seriously do not think this is an iPhone thing, but an AT&T thing. Due to the fact that we could not keep our AT&T phones when we switched (which is normal), it looks like to me that AT&T has programmed the phones for these pushes for whatever reason and for whatever reason, they can't be done through WiFi on iPhones. Our two iPhones are now sleeping just fine now that they are on Verizon and our data use is way down. The Samsung was never a probem. When it's in the house, it's connected to WiFi. My phone, the iPhone 4 is sending wee little bits of information that I don't particularly understand since I had one app (flashlight), I rarely leave the house since I work at home and it just sits around asleep most of the time. My average daily use for the data is 100 kb, so it's not real concerning.

BTW, Mark, depending on how much your son uses 'data', I shut mine off on the phone when we were with AT&T. It is easy enough to turn back on when needed. It would, however, be a pain in 'you know where' if the data was being used a lot during the day. It's a thought, might not be a 'good' thought.

PS: Neither of us have or did have email set up through the phones. We needed the necessary gmail accounts or whatever, but mine is not active nor is hers, or ever was.