Level 1

2 points

Unknown data usage early morning

With the changes to the data plans, i decided to look at my wifes data usage on her iphone. What i have found is odd and a bit concerning. Overall her data usage is pretty much nothing, except for something that occurs every morning around 1 or 2 am. I have included data usage on the AT&T account below. As you can see, something happens around 1 or 2 am every morning, i just dont know what it is. The amount of data being transferred is REALLY high if you ask me, as high as 75336KB back on the 17th. I called AT&T support and they said it was the phone updating or mail being downloaded, basically they have no idea. I have the mail set to fetch manually already. Anyway to determine what is going on???

06/04 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3368KB
06/03 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18906KB
06/02 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 6878KB
06/01 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9460KB
05/31 07:45 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1918KB
05/31 01:27 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7551KB
05/30 02:27 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1224KB
05/30 01:17 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2685KB
05/29 01:39 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8120KB
05/28 01:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5410KB
05/28 01:07 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5068KB
05/27 10:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21778KB
05/27 01:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 10419KB
05/26 09:26 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 20657KB
05/26 01:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8467KB
05/25 02:21 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18086KB
05/25 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5249KB
05/24 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1012KB
05/23 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 12978KB
05/22 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9749KB
05/21 01:41 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 19166KB
05/20 01:17 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 23860KB
05/18 11:56 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 15440KB
05/18 01:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 29900KB
05/17 01:12 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 75336KB

Posted on Jun 5, 2010 4:56 AM

2,094 replies

Jun 7, 2010 4:44 PM in response to ihopeitworks

We're 7 days into the month and I have 70MB wracked up in charges already. I have an iPad and never go online from the phone except in a restaurant for half an hour. Half the restaurants I eat in have wi-fi. This is nuts?

TosaDeac

Level 1

37 points

Jun 7, 2010 5:14 PM in response to ihopeitworks

The only way I can see to figure this out is to shut off all Push/Fetch features on the iPhone and then for consecutive days not use it at all to do anything and/or keep it completely powered down and see if the data charges still occur. I don't think I can be without my iPhone though, so we need someone to cut the cord long enough to see the results. Any volunteers?

jinx.pt

Level 1

40 points

Jun 7, 2010 5:15 PM in response to trans-humanist

That is freakingly scary. I am so glad that I'm not an american right now (or more precisely, I'm glad I'm not an AT&T costumer)....Not that I have anything to hide but....my privacy is my privacy!

Seriously, though, those data transfers really seem to be AT&T, so they may be transferring data from your phones..... :O

TosaDeac

Level 1

37 points

Jun 7, 2010 5:23 PM in response to Eddie Strauss

That's true in regards to shutting the phone off completely, but if one shuts off push/fetch and doesn't purposefully use the phone's data features it at least proves it is not something you are doing yourself voluntarily and would put the focus more on something AT&T is "collecting" from our phones.

Jun 7, 2010 5:29 PM in response to TosaDeac

My internet phone usage has only decreased since I got an iPad. But those charges are increasing. And my phone habits have always been the same. I leave the phone on, asleep, overnight. Push is not on and in fact not available for my POP mail accounts.

TosaDeac

Level 1

37 points

Jun 7, 2010 5:41 PM in response to Eddie Strauss

I looked back at all my bills and these middle of the night charges started to show up around 6/18/09 and from all the bills I looked at since then they are there and all the ones before they are not. Also I noticed that prior to that all the data charges seem to be timed for when I actually accessed data (lots of small sized data packets) but more recently it only seems to be in these larger ones in the middle of the night. So, maybe it is just the way AT&T does its accounting of data?

cnpeyton Author

Level 1

2 points

Jun 7, 2010 7:09 PM in response to TosaDeac

I was also wondering if this was some type of data accumulation that was just posted at the end of the day. The only problem is that my wifes phone shows transfers of 20 MB, 30 MB, even 70 MB one night. That is a ridiculous amount of data, especially since all she really does is check email and occasionally read some news or maybe download an app. For our current billing cycle, we are about half over and over 300 MB already.

One of the really frustrating things is that when i called AT&T customer service to help solve this mystery, they basically threw there hands up. We dont have any tools to help diagnose, we dont really know anything about the phones and how they are setup, basically nothing. The lady i talked to said her first guess was either stats being collected by apple or updates to the phone. I feel pretty confident that these aren't the case. Her next suggestion was the setup of the email accounts on the phone. My wife has 2 email accounts and then calendar and contacts setup. The phone has a general setting for either pushing or fetching data, and then an advanced section were you can set individual mail accounts to behave differently. The phone general setting was set to push, her gmail account was set to fetch, and her yahoo account was set to push. Mail contacts and calendar was set to fetch. So what i did was change everything to fetch manually. So, here is the last couple of days of data charge. You will notice that i made this change during the day on the 5th. Look at my data usage on the 3rd and 4th, over 3 MB and 8 MB. Since the change on the 5th, no weird data transfers during the early morning hours. There are a quite a few spread out over the day of the 5th, 6th, and 7th, but they are mostly a few hundred KB, give or take. Another odd thing, before the 5th, most days i had maybe 1 or 2 data transfers, but always this mysterious one around 1 or 2 am. Since i made the change on the 5th, i have a lot more data transfers during the day, they are much, much smaller in size compared to before the 5th, but the mysterious transfers at 1 or 2 am have disappeared. I know, I'm scratching my head also...

06/07 06:13 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4KB
06/07 06:07 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 586KB
06/07 05:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 124KB
06/07 12:04 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4KB
06/07 12:02 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4KB
06/07 09:29 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 297KB
06/07 09:19 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 27KB
06/07 08:19 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 58KB
06/06 03:53 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 191KB
06/06 03:45 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 761KB
06/06 03:18 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 228KB
06/06 02:58 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2256KB
06/06 02:03 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 47KB
06/06 12:53 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 893KB
06/06 12:52 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 26KB
06/06 12:43 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 956KB
06/06 12:28 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 552KB
06/06 12:23 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1034KB
06/06 10:37 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 31KB
06/05 12:55 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 68KB
06/05 12:42 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 898KB
06/05 12:32 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 22KB
06/05 12:26 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21KB
06/05 12:23 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 67KB
06/05 11:36 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 194KB
06/05 11:07 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1728KB
06/05 10:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 221KB
06/05 10:43 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1319KB
06/05 10:30 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7KB
06/05 10:21 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 129KB
06/05 10:16 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 102KB
06/05 10:02 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1003KB
06/05 09:32 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2410KB
06/05 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 667KB
06/04 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3368KB
06/03 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18906KB

Jun 7, 2010 7:17 PM in response to cnpeyton

I just went to my phone to turn off 'push'. A warning dialogue came up to say that I would be disabling "find my iPhone". Nope. Don't want to do that.

All my mail accounts are set to fetch but one; mobileme. That was set to Push. The only other option there is 'manual' and I changed it.

TosaDeac

Level 1

37 points

Jun 7, 2010 7:41 PM in response to Eddie Strauss

That might make sense then since when I went back and looked at my data charges it all seemed to start on June 18, 2010 when I likely upgraded to iPhone Os3 (which had find my iPhone and the need for Push to be enabled). So that must be the issue except I know one of my friends that has the same issue does not use MobileMe like I do...but does have Push enabled for his Yahoo Email account. So "push" must be the cause which is not surprising I guess. It still does not satisfy me though since I am in a WIFI location 80% of my day (work and home) so I still don't see why my usage should be so high.

Jun 8, 2010 8:18 AM in response to Jeff Hallgren

Last night I tried an experiment and the result is astonishing!

I typically have 8 to 12 thousand KB of data output lately at 2 in the morning. I and many others. That is the subject of this thread.

I only had one mail account set to push. Mobileme. I changed that to manual.
I turned off the phone at midnight. I turned it back on again at 6:00 am.

I just checked my data usage on my bill. Get this:

06/07, the night before, I show 7995KB set at 2:47 am.

06/08, last night, I show 83KB at 6:00 am.

Jun 8, 2010 8:30 AM in response to Eddie Strauss

GMTA - I did a similar test. I turned off the phone before going to bed, turned it on around 6:08 AM. I show 5 MB sent at 6:08, none between 2 & 3, the usual time that outgoing data appear. So this shoots down the hypothesis that AT&T is merely accumulating sent data over a prior time period and reports it in the wee hours. If that were the case the data would have still appeared between 2 & 3 AM.

The iPhone is truly phoning "home", wherever home is.

Jun 8, 2010 8:46 AM in response to Shane Davis

I just had a nasty chat with someone in "technical" at ATT who told me that in 3 years of working there this is the first she has heard of this and I was the only person with this problem! I tried to tell her how many posts there are in two threads here with people saying they have contacted ATT and also over at MacInTouch. We hung up.

TosaDeac

Level 1

37 points

Jun 8, 2010 9:05 AM in response to Shane Davis

I do have MobileMe and have it set to Push (really only for the Find My iPhone feature), but I know my friend with Yahoo has the same problem but I know he has Push enabled as well. So that would seem to suggest it is the Push feature causing this. The few of you that experimented with shutting off Push and shutting off the phone for the night seem to support the idea it is something with Push, but what is getting pushed at 2-3am? I wonder if calling Apple Support would yield a better answer?

@Lawrence...If I recall I did not enable Push until the Find My iPhone feature was released. Do you recall if you have always used Push?

Message was edited by: TosaDeac

Jun 8, 2010 9:09 AM in response to TosaDeac

I misspoke before. I did not change to from push to manual. I meant to but I didn't want to cancel the find my iPhone feature. So the only thing I did was turn off the phone.

I'm on the phone with Apple now. On hold.

jinx.pt

Level 1

40 points

Jun 8, 2010 9:11 AM in response to TosaDeac

I'd recommend people with this problem, to file a bug report, and to request in the bug report, for an application or profile that allows to identify what data is being sent.
I have not heard of people outside AT&T having this problem, thus why I think it's AT&T.
(I don't have none of the problems you describe, and I have everything with push (mobile me, gmail, several apps).

If AT&T or someone else is retrieving information from your phones, this is very serious.
If there is a problem with PUSH, it is also very serious.

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Unknown data usage early morning