Unknown data usage early morning

I didnt have any joy with O2- one the face of it very helpful but then they ignored my emails when they got too hard to answer; then they ignored my formal complaint. No matter the rights and wrongs of my complaint, what sort of business refuses to answer complaints. A google search showed the head office is in Spain so not likley to be much response from there. Wondering whether to switch to Vodafone.

There has been little or no change and, as Broooz has said about O2, it appears that AT&T's National Urgent Care Center (Roger Beard in particular) has chosen to ignore the last three emails sent to them, all of which showed screen shots of what has been going on including a chart showing my average usage during the past year. As usual, at the end of a 6 month span, usage jumps to sometimes 10 times what the normal is.

Taking Calineil's tips, I've now started not only shutting down all Apps at the end of the day but turning off Cellular Data and WiFi before putting the phone on the charger for the night. Despite it rarely coming out of my pocket during the day (half a dozen texts, a couple phone calls, checking on AAPL stock) it doesn't get used. As I've told AT&T, we've got a MacBook, an iMac, and an iPad all running on WiFi, why should we be using our phones as computers?? Both of us are retired and don't spend much time away from the house but, when we do, it is with friends and family that also have WiFi!!

In addition to the nightly ritual, I've also gone though the Apps on the phone and removed the ones I've rarely used. I've also turned off my Gmail account even though I rarely used it nor did I have any push notifications turned on.

Despite turning all the Apps off, within an hour of closing things down at night, DataMan Pro seems to wake up to alert me I am using XX% of my daily allowance! How am I using things that are turned off? I also have Onavo running during the day and, when checking, I see two items that somehow show data usage during the day. They are "AppleIDXMLRPC" and "imtransferagent". I'm guessing they are related to iTunes Store and iMessage. Can anyone confirm that?? Logging out of my iTunes account doesn't seem to make any difference.

Another App I recently added is the mobile version of "Activity Monitor Touch" and it shows CPU activity as well as all of the processes within the phone and their "priority". Anyone else using it??

Anyone using "iPhone Explorer" to see exactly what is on the phone, especially under the "Media" banner?

The phone is a 4S that I got in February but I am considering taking it back to the Apple Store to have it gone over, not for this problem but there are times when it freezes up and other times when none of the alerts for texts or phone calls go off - dead silence - even though the switch to silence/vibrate is not turned off. I've restored it twice since I've had it but the problems persist........Jack

Calineil:

I live in California. My large blocks of cellular data occurs at 9:14pm on the nights that it happens. I followed your instructions for turning thnigs off and added Dataman Pro. A few days ago I saw that I had a 62MB cellular data transfer at 9:14pm. In checking Dataman there was no file transfer at that time, however there was one of that size at 11am the following morning. Per Dataman the only thing that had a data transfer on the phone at 11am was iTunes. I don't have iTunes Match and nothing really in iCloud. Regardless of the time 9pm or 11am the phone would have been on wireless. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Your large block of cellular data did not occur at 9:14 PM. It occured over the course of the previous day in dozens or hundreds of small increments, and the accumulated usage was posted to the billing system at 9:14 PM.

When you say the phone was on wireless do you mean WiFi? Are you taking into account that the phone turns WiFi off when it goes to sleep, so any background apps that use data will use 3G?

[BTW, the information above has been posted to this message thread scores of times; I'm not saying anything new.]

Lawrence - Don't forget that the phone stays on wifi when plugged in to a power source.

I have DataMan Pro, and have tested it, both on and off wifi, using apps that I know use data and those that do not. I have found it to be very accurate. Though it only reports data usage per app by time, and does not show how much data a particular app used, it got it right on all of my tests (spent 30+ yrs in info sys, so I know how to test.)

My phone shows small amounts of data via cellualr sent about once an hour. Of course, that is how DataMan presents it, so the actual frequency could be much smaller. During hours when there was no other activity, DataMan shows the data amount, but says "No apps. Did you turn on App Watch?" This implies that the activity is the phone staying in contact with the cellular and or wifi networks.

I have never used iTunes on my phone, and, as I've seen other posts saying that iTunes is at fault, I won't be in the future.

Hi there DevaxV and thanks for the question. It sure sounds like a sketchy one when you've turned everything off and shut down the apps but there is still another access for a fairly large chunk of data too.

As SK8Dreams also mentioned, if the phone is on a power supply it should remain on Wifi even thought the native state for iPhones is to switch to 3G once it's in sleep mode so to have this happen I need to check, do you have your phone attached to a charging supply over night as well ? Dock or charger ?

It sounds like iTunes has run a usage and possibly synch report through the system and checked for any updates as well. Can you please double check in settings > Music to make sure iTunes Match is off but what also has me puzzled in the timing of it. I noticed Lawrence says it's the timing the data usage was sent to the billing system but I think we need to dig deeper here and find out why your iTunes was even pulling down data. Do you use this often through the day DevaxV and if so are you on a 3G or Wifi network ? Just some more info needed to try and pinpoint what's going on.

Lawrence, what provider are you on up there in NYC ? AT&T or another ?

SK8Dreams I'm the same as you, I've heard of all sorts of issues with iTunes and it's data usage and have only ever used it on my laptop, never the phone and I'm using Dataman Pro as well and found it the same. Pretty accurate for sure apart from it not being able to pinpoint app use a little more in it's particular apps access but it's been up there well on accuracy with it's numbers.

Oh, SK8Dreams, how's your usage been this past while too ?

DevaxV, other than the incident the other night with the 62Mb transfer have you noticed any reduction in date usage and less in the way off unknown usage ? I'm now VERY curious to find out more about why iTunes has shown up on a download this size.

I'm currenty in Lincoln CA with my partners work until mid Friday but will do more checking around on information as soon as I can from here later today.

Calineil

Calineil wrote:

Lawrence, what provider are you on up there in NYC ? AT&T or another ?

I'm on AT&T, but I've been following this thread from the beginning and users around the world have reported similar behavior.

DevaxV, other than the incident the other night with the 62Mb transfer have you noticed any reduction in date usage and less in the way off unknown usage ? I'm now VERY curious to find out more about why iTunes has shown up on a download this size.

There is an option in iTunes to automatically download any music, videos or apps to the iPhone that were purchased on a computer and vice versa. This caught me last year while I was on International roaming. I bought an app on my computer planning to sync it to the iPhone, but it appeared on the iPhone before I ran a sync. The option is on by default, but you can turn it off in Settings.

Calineil - My usage has been completely normal for a long time now. Except for a 10MB burp in Feb that coincided with an SMS and nothing else (pre app tracking with DMP), I've had no problems. I'm on AT&T in NYC.

DevaxV - Something else to check, if you haven't already, is Settings/General/About/Diagnostics & Usage Select "Don't Send" I believe this is only available in iOS 5.x While there, take a look at the Diagnostic & Usage Data. Each entry is date and time stamped, and you might find a correlation. This stuff seems to be all text and wouldn't count for much by way of data, but who knows what else might be sent along with it.

if your on at&t and your seeing a bunch of data used in the am between 1 and 3 then its just small amounts of data that were used through out the day and that is when at&t updates the data usage through out the day thats all it is its not any thing else it could be a email she sent or she was on the internet through out the day its nothing to be consirned about thats just when they update small bits of data that you used

An update to yesterday's entry and it gets even stranger!!

As outlined in my last post, I turned off WiFi, Cellular Data, and all Apps before putting the phone on the charger last night.

It wasn't until 11:40AM this morning that I turned on WiFi but not Cellular Data, it is still off. I then checked DataMan Pro at 11:41AM and found that it showed I had downloaded 539.7KB and uploaded 932.5KB of data on 3G!! Additionally, my 368/1.544 DSL showed 1.9MB downloaded and 4.8MB uploaded, all within a minute. Since I was sitting in my living room and could see my DSL modem, there was no indication of activity being transferred on it. As of 3:49 the 3G figures haven't changed but another 1.2MB of data was downloaded via WiFi while the phone was in my pocket and I was on my tractor cutting the grass!

Maybe it is time to take this 2 month old 4S down to the Apple Store and have it gone over, not so much for this but for occasional freezing and an unexplainable lack of "Sounds" when the phone rings or a text arrives.

Calineil

Thanks for all of the input. It is my daugther's 4s that I am dealing with. My 4 doesn't have the same issues.

Some more background. After exceeding her data limit in March I loaded Dataman pro on the phone prior to the new month start date of the 11th. I turned off everything that was specifed in previous posts so that I would be good to go.

According to AT&T as of today she has used 89MB of her data, 63.7 of that occured on April 16th at 9:14pm. The same time that large data transfers happened in the past.

Dataman Pro shows no cellular data transfer on the 16th however on the 17th at 11am there is a 61.6MB data transfer and the only app that ran during that time was iTunes. Cellular data for the apple store and iTunes Match was off. Also iCloud was set to only work on wifi.

During the night the phone is plugged in and on wifi.

I am waiting to see if I get another big data hit on AT&T to try and figure this out. Any thoughts?

I got an email today from Att about upgrading my data service since my current usage is high. dug into it, I had a 88 meg use at 12:37am last week so I'm halfway through my 200 mb plan 8 days into billing cycle.

Most of my data use is at home on WiFi, if I'm not at home I check email, maybe use Mapquest, thats it no streaming or downloads of any kind, If I'm gonna do that I wait till I'm home and do it on WiFi.

I called Att about it and they expained how to turn off 3G data so it only works on Wifi. I explained the inconvience of that especially since my date usage averages 50 meg/month and how I'm forced to pay for it anyway. They said once data is used they can't go back and credit account, then towards the end he more or less contradicted that by saying if I go over at the end of billing cycle they "might" be able to do a credit.

Basically they weren't going to take any responsibilty for it on their end.

I guess I'll just keep an eye on it and raise **** with them if it happens again.

Sorry I did not read 118 pages of posts.

The information you provided I did acquire in the posts I did read.

It still doesn't give me an answer to how it's happening or how to prevent it. I'm looking for those answers.

My post was matter of fact, basically here's what I encountered, here's Att's repsonse.

Turning the phone off or constantly disabling or enabling 3G isn't a solution.

gollumsmac - Mapquest! Maps use a lot more data than you might think. I go carefully with them. Get DataMan Pro. At a few minutes before the hour, close all apps. Wait for the hour to change and use Mapquest as you might normally. Check usage in DataMan Pro.

gollumsmac wrote:

I got an email today from Att about upgrading my data service since my current usage is high. dug into it, I had a 88 meg use at 12:37am last week so I'm halfway through my 200 mb plan 8 days into billing cycle.

Most of my data use is at home on WiFi, if I'm not at home I check email, maybe use Mapquest, thats it no streaming or downloads of any kind, If I'm gonna do that I wait till I'm home and do it on WiFi.

I called Att about it and they expained how to turn off 3G data so it only works on Wifi. I explained the inconvience of that especially since my date usage averages 50 meg/month and how I'm forced to pay for it anyway. They said once data is used they can't go back and credit account, then towards the end he more or less contradicted that by saying if I go over at the end of billing cycle they "might" be able to do a credit.

Basically they weren't going to take any responsibilty for it on their end.

I guess I'll just keep an eye on it and raise **** with them if it happens again.

I got really curious about this data use even though I have an unlimited plan, my wife has the 200MEG plan, and hers shows the same kind of nightly transmissions, although they are generally smaller than mine, which so far, has a max of 43meg in one night. My phone is plugged into the charger every night by 8PM, and every night between 11PM and 1AM, transmits (or receives) data over 3G. So much for wi-fi being on all night. So, I got sneaky, and turned off the 3G cellular data (in spite of ATT telling me I have 4G, grin), and I did that two nights in a row. Then I logged onto ATT online, and it wouldn't show me my data usage at all 'due to changes in my data plan'. When I turned 3G cellular data back on, and waited for a few minutes, magically, the usage data was suddenly available. What's this all about, and why isn't everyone making more noise about it?