Unknown data usage early morning

I have definitely taken your advice and disabled the Diagnostics & Usage and the iAds services.

I just turned my cellular data back on and it hasn't used as much data. However, I have yet to leave it on all night. I may do that tonight and see what happens, but I don't think I'm too bothered by having it turned off while I'm sleeping. I have no need for it then anyway.

So, thank you!

I login to the http://wireless.att.com site and check my recent usage, looking at the Data Usage Details to see various Internet/MEdia Net charges at various times throughout each day.

I am going to turn off the Location Services > System Services > Diagnostics & Usage, Location Based iAds, and Setting Time Zone options since I don't want them on ultimately anyway. I don't think that they are the cause of my issue (since turning off e-mail Push stopped the spikes) but who knows ... I may turn all of my e-mail accounts back to Push tomorrow night to see if I see a data usage spike.

That's great news for sure DnceForce77 and I hope those overnight data spikes drop for you. It may be the issue where when the phone drops off wi-fi to 3G it starts to have issues with any email connections so that's another option to keep an eye on. Going from an automatic push to a manual fetch for email. Please if you can, keep us updated on any changes you see.

Neil.

You-are-all-you-need-to-be.blogspot.com

Hi again thezonie and definitely a good idea on checking online with the AT&T account for sure. Maybe see how a text update test goes too ? Also the Setting Time Zone option isn't one to worry about as your phone needs that to keep your time up to date for a variety of apps and services but definitely switch iAds and Usage and Diagnostics off. Those in particular will eat your data usage up over night in most cases.

Please keep us updated as it sure would be good to see more positive results from this.

Neil.

You-are-all-you-need-to-be.blogspot.com

Ok, I'll turn the Setting Time Zone option back on.

I'm going to also set all of my e-mail accounts to Push to see how tonight goes with the Diagnostics & Usage and Location-Based iAds turned off.

I am expecting to see a spike of data use overnight, but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong. 🙂

I am also resetting my phone's 3G data usage counters just to see what those values are when compated to AT&T's. I've been home within range of my WiFi network since 3 pm this afternoon, and the most recent Internet/MEdia Net charge I see on AT&T's page is at 7 pm, so everything between now and tomorrow morning should be when my phone is only using WiFi when being actively used. (It is almost 9:30 pm.)

I will report back tomorrow with the results.

Sounds good DnceForce77 but it should be ok to leave 3G on for this test. Once your other settings are set up the phone shouldn't need to stream 3G through the night. I run Pandora most nights with 3G on and those other settings as I've mentioned but this past week still haven't used more than 1Mb of unknown data.

Good luck though and looking forward to hopefully an update tomorrow.

Neil.

You-are-all-you-need-to-be.blogspot.com

Well, I do have good news this morning. After changing all of my e-mail accounts to Push (which previously caused a 100-200 MB data usage spike) this morning I only had a 11 MB blip at 7:29 am.

So the Location changes that Calineil suggest may have done the trick! I will continue to monitor the usage over the next couple of days a report back my results.

Thanks for the help! 🙂

That really is GREAT news thezonie and I'm very glad I could help for sure.

Looking forward to seeing more positive updates on these usage issues and hoping one day very soon we get Apple to fix this mess too, after all they are the ones who updated the iOS and since February more and more people are noticing these issues. I've seen this going on for 2 years now and it's about time it was sorted.

Looking forward to less un-necessary data usage and more happy days surfing, streaming and updating.

Neil.

Yesterday morning's data numbers took a while to hit AT&T's website, but it looks like my phone chewed through around 30 MB of data two nights ago. It's not the 100-200 MB that used to happen overnight, but it's not necessarily insignficant, either. 30 MB may be due to Push e-mail running on multiple accounts, although the night before it only used 11 MB.

I'm going to keep an eye on the usage over the next few days and see how it goes. 30 MB overnight doing practically nothing is still 900 MB a month, which is what my average total monthly usage used to be.

My grandson has an Iphone3. Under Settings/Location Services, there is not a "System Services" box at the bottom of that screen. Is there any way to set the "Diagnostics and Usage" preference to "off."

I think that extra option only came in from 3Gs onwards C Irene. Have you looked through:

Settings > General > About > Scroll to the bottom of this screen and find Diagnostics & Usage and change this to Don't Send ?

I'm afraid I've not used the 3 myself so hopefully someone in here can help more with that one.

Calineil

http://you-are-all-you-need-to-be.blogspot.com/2012/03/trouble-with-too-smart-ph ones.html

I believe the "System Services" option in "Location Services" was new to iOS 5, which the iPhone 3G does not support. (The last version the iPhone 3G supported was 4.2.1)

iOS 5.0 supported the iPhone 3GS and later.

iOS 4.2.1 doesn't have the Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage option, either.

Here we are, back again, just as I predicted I would be six months ago. This is my 4th instance of outrageous data use and I've gone right back to the National Urgent Care Center at AT&T. Included all my old emails and fired an updated note to them. Got a rather subdued response back from them, more or less saying there isn't much they can do about the problem. I asked them to revisit all three previous occurrences and review what actions their people took because within a day or two of contacting them, the problem went away. Someone (obviously lower level workers) are missing something in their initial investigation. Once it gets bumped up the food chain, "someone" does "something" to make it go away!! Unfortunately, that "someone" doesn't seem to have documented the procedure or was told NOT to.

For those of you who have not read my entries beginning around page 83 or so, every six months I see data use spike on my account which contains two phones. With an iMac, a MacBook, and an iPad2 all living in a WiFi environment, it is rare that we use our phones for anything other than calls or texting/iMessaging. Both phones have the 200MB plans and rarely hit a combined 50MB use on a normal month. I've tried to explain that to the AT&T folks but, so far, it doesn't seem to have sunk in. We close down Apps at the end of the day, have everything except Cellular Data turned off, and have done "hard resets" on several occasions since the problem reappeared.

I had Dataman and Onavo on both phones but found them to be battery hogs and they didn't really provide me with any eye opening information. Then again, maybe I didn't have them set up properly!!

Yes, this is exactly the same as I reported several weeks ago - I get the same thing - when my mail app fails to connect, the downloads go up. I cant figure out why it fails but I simply cancel the account and start a new one with identical settings and it all works again. It is always the same email address that fails - my other email address through the same server doesnt do it. And they have identical settings. So I dont know why but at least I have a workaround.

My email provider is in the UK so it is nothing to do with AT&T here!

I had the data consumption issue on my 3GS, iOS4 as well as iOS5. I believe Textfree app, on my cell was responsible for this huge data uploads. I uninstalled Textfree and everything looks normal. For re-confirmation I installed Textfree couple of days back. Within 10 minutes the data transfer was around 13MB. And also I observed that Textfree was using the AT&T data, even though I had my Wireless turned ON and I was at my home with Internet connection perfectly working. I couldn't explain this. I ended up un-installing the Textfree again.