Unknown data usage early morning

Well, you learn something new every day. If I plug the phone into the computer to charge, then wi-fi turns off after a while with sleep mode on. However, plugged into the Apple charger, the wi-fi doesn't turn off, BUT whatever application sends data to ATT, still uses 3G cellular data, UNLESS you turn it off. So, ATT needs to be called to task for this, and users who have limited data need to make LOTS of noise about this.

OK, I'm done with this, unless, or until my wife's phone exceeds the limit, and then I will make some waves. Hopefully, I will be able to surf the wave others make by then.

I turned off my 3G data and will leave it off for a few days then I will check my data useage on Att's website.

I also turned off everything I could in settings not related to iCloud, Clock, Mail, that kind of thing.

For me it's a privacy issue as much as anything. When I close an app I don't like the idea of it still sending data back and forth, when I close it I want it to stop what it was doing. I'm okay having Mail ping my accounts for new email or my clock updating, much beyond that I don't want any data transfer.

When you read stories about Att providing the NSA with data and Facebook by default accessing your computers address book, it feeds the caution (paranoia).

With Mapquest I did use it once last week for less than 5 minutes without clicking "Start Navigation" but that was it. I closed it when I was done.

Sk8Dreams wrote:

rphunte - It's not AT&T. The problem occurs with many different carriers. It's an Apple problem that they just won't acknowledge.

I don't have access to another carrier to test, but would assume that they do similar things in order to collect whatever data is being collected, or sent. I wish they would just explain this, and clear the air.

Hi rphunte42.

Through the past few months of scanning discussion forums and updates, it's been shown that these issues are on AT&T, O2 and a variety of other service providers. There are reports from the UK, US and Australia as well as some European areas.

The main flow of data we get is from apps and our phones running usage and diagnostic statistics such as location details, app updates, iOs checks and the mighty sales information back to marketing companies through app add-ons such as Pinchmedia and others which are actually logged in the background with a few apps.

The only way to avoid this would be to find apps which do not use stats for their updates by contacting the developers and asking or seeing if this information is available on their app information (highly unlikely as they like to keep these things hidden from us)

The cellular providers will mostly offer apps to run diagnostics and usage checks and yes, as Sk8Dreams said too, those apps will use data even if the app is "shutdown" which is something more and more newer apps and utils seem to be doing.

In most cases, switching off your Diagnostics and Usage from the two locations on your phone and making sure your iCloud and Email settings are set more towards a manual update should ease the usage BUT in some cases the problems come form a rogue phone or even a small and seemingly harmless app we have downloaded.

One port of call is take the phone to your retailer and demand they test the phone to find out what is going on. The other is to clear all and any apps you don't necessarily "need" and see if that starts to lower usage. The other and probably the worst suggestion any would even an AT&T tech would suggest is to reset your phone back to factory standard blank and start again just like a home PC. Something none of us really want to do and yes, we need to ask more as to WHY we should be having to turn off our 3G and Data connections when those are the main reason we got these newer phones in the first place. Right ?

Several contact attempts have been made with Apple and AT&T about these problems including a variety of attempts from myself but with each and every contact they all like to act dumb as if there are no problems.

It's not a carrier issue for sure as it's too various in carrier reports. It's definitely an issue with Apple themselves and also the creators of apps that use monitoring add-ons. The only we can get answers would be to collectively approach Apple in a petition state and have them stop this crap.

THEY are the accountable ones for the designs of the main iOs software and their developers are the co-creators for the apps that suck up our data even when we think they're not.

One "Aid" to seeing your data flow is Dataman Pro or something similar yet nobody out there seems to have been smart enough yet to create an app that can pinpoint and itemize what apps use what data. Something we all need to maybe create even more of an uproar about and have them, no, MAKE them be more transparent in what our phones are doing. We are afterall, their paying customers.

Am finally feeling better after knocking off two weeks with one **** of a viral infection but from this afternoon onwards it's time to start digging around even deeper and finding out why these things are happening.

HOPE to start getting some more answers and solutions and hoping everyone has an amazing, even better week ahead.

Lets starts MAKING those answerable people answer us, the customers.

Calineil.

Feedback is Food.

http://you-are-all-you-need-to-be.blogspot.com/2012/04/welcome-along-on-this-jou rney.html

Something has me wondering........ has anyone had a full and absolute confirmation that the data usage showing between late at night and early morning IS a billing issue with AT&T ?

I'm asking this now as reading back through a few dozen posts that also cover other carries this doesn't seem to be an accurate statement.

People mention in severel places that the "chunks" of data being used are to form the billing routine for AT&T yet do O2 and the other carriers do this as well ? If they do then they NEED to clear this up and be more transparent about their billing methods BUT why would a carrier do this when all they are doing is choking their own systems up with a flow of billing information when they could realistically do this on a more constant (hourly ?) basis through the days.

Has anyone yet been given proof this data usage IS a billing issue and if so can they provide it for all to see ?

Even during my call directly to an Apple tech, he came over as "surprised" their were issues with the phones switching from wifi to 3G when the phone goes into sleep mode so once again blocked off in any further help from even the Apple themselves. Do they think we're that dumb ? Really ? Or do they just train their staff to BE that dumb ?

There are two main and sole factors in this issue. The service providers themselves and the mannufacturers of both the hardware and the software it runs on. This includes all apps that Apple developers and management approve for use on their systems, Apple programmers for the iOS system and our carrier providers who are reaping the benefits of our data usage. Is it not time we started REALLY pushing for answers and not taking the usual "I'm sorry I can't help you any further" respones ?

Please people, be careful on what apps you use and what settings you have on your phones. As we know it can cost us dearly when we are not careful and we need to start making the providers accountable for these things as we the customers are the ones paying their bills from our pockets. THEY should be fixing these things not us.

To be strong be a collective and make them answer. Make them fix this. Until then, the investigations continue and blogs will keep choking up with cries for help.

In the meantime, does anyone have actual proof these data chunk usages ARE an AT&T billing issue ? If you do can you please show us to put our minds at ease ?

Regards.

Calineil

Feedback is food.

Oh, Sk8Dreams, GREAT news on your usage too 😉

Calineil wrote:

Something has me wondering........ has anyone had a full and absolute confirmation that the data usage showing between late at night and early morning IS a billing issue with AT&T ?

I'm asking this now as reading back through a few dozen posts that also cover other carries this doesn't seem to be an accurate statement.

People mention in severel places that the "chunks" of data being used are to form the billing routine for AT&T yet do O2 and the other carriers do this as well ? If they do then they NEED to clear this up and be more transparent about their billing methods BUT why would a carrier do this when all they are doing is choking their own systems up with a flow of billing information when they could realistically do this on a more constant (hourly ?) basis through the days.

The evidence is pretty clear. I had an original iPhone. My first bill had 50 pages, because it listed every data transfer, in or out. Each one was a few bytes up to 1 KB (the size of a packet). There were reports of bills of 300 pages from people who used more data than I. Think about your own usage. Every email requires several transmissions, none of them larger than 1 KB. So if it isn't a summary why don't you see thousands of lines of data exchanges on your bill?

There are only a few providers of cellular network software and billing systems, so it is not surprising that a number of carriers show the same pattern.

I respectfully disagree. The carriers are not off the hook on this issue. The carriers billing practices will reveal what and how users are billed for data; getting the carriers to reveal those billing practices is not an easy task.

AT&T's past behaviors for decades, yes, I remember, is to "round up."

With that said, I like the finds you posted previously but don't make the mistake of excluding the carriers; they aren't your pals and they will pick your pockets - as they are doing now. The privacy issue consumes data, not a lot in many cases but it still consumes data at our expense. Even Google exploited Apple. Getting regulators to recognize this beyond privacy is challenging.

Hi again Lawrence and I can understand where you are coming from too but the real question is can anyone provide proof direct form their service provider that this is how they are billing us ? There are so many posts about the billing data "chunks" happening at such a variety of times yet so often this is pointed to the providers billing process but nobody has shown or come up with hard, factual proof of this so we can throw this to the providers and tell them it need clarified and fixed. I understand your billing comment but can anyone actually provide solid, undisputable evidence this is what is going on other than a bill ?

Backpacker57, lol honestly there is no way I'd ever let the carriers off the hook for these issues as dealing with several different carriers this past 3-5 years and even working for one at one stage I understand how under-handed and deviant they can be. I spent several years with Telecom NZ so I got to see a lot of the extra "rounding up" bills got.

There sure is the privacy issue as on a response from AT&T my partner was told that AT&T can't divulge any further information on what IP address the data was coming from due to the Data Protection and Privacy act so for all we know our phones could easily be selling us out which also comes into play with how MUCH data the phones use. I've also just been reading that anyone on a new 4S with Siri can expect to use a fair amount more data as Siri has a habit of updating it's abilities regularly. Something for all 4S users to look out for.

Doing more and more hunting on this issue daily, this has become a twisted and sworded case of user-wants user-gets but still, we are the customers and more transparency is needed for the service providers and Apple in relation to what our phones really are doing to cause these massive spikes in data and it's currently only to get worse as networks begin to tighten their grips on bandwith.

I guess one of the questions we need to examine is do we want to lay down and let it keep happening or do we want to make it better for us all ?

Take for example the court case of Matthew Spaccarelli against AT&T:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/13/matthew-spaccarelli-att_n_1342494.html

Anyway, for now it's off to hunt around deeper and further and start to piece some more of this together.

Hoping we can all come together and actually start to make a difference for the better on this messy usage nightmare.

Calineil

Feedback is Food.

Yes, and as many times as this has been re-posted I still argue that this is not always the case. In my example the data that showed us using in a 24 hr period was more than the phone had used since it was purchased. So the data was not sent and received from the phone if the phone itself did not track the usage. If it were cumulative of the previouse days usage then it should show as usage on the phone!

to follow up on a earlier post of mine, could someone make a online survey or something that lets everyone list apps and their version and hopefully it may help pinpoint which app(s) behind all these? I don't know how to do that but just want to point out a direction that might help solve this problem.

I had this problem when I first started using my 4S, but like I mentioned in the last post, I haven't been actively updating my apps, now almost all my apps are not the latest, which seems to ease the mysterious 3G data usage on my 4S (now down to ~1.5 MB/day) and I can totally live with that.

so anyone?

Sk8Dreams wrote:

rphunte - Do you happen to have the MY AT&T app on your phone? That, and any other app you got from AT&T will always use their cellular network.

I rarely use it unless I am away from my computer, so I guess that's not a problem. However, it does seem more than a bit self-serving of them.

I am glad you are feeling better. If you get any useful information, please share it. For those who have limited data 'budgets', watching the data usage is really important. Do you know what 'field test' is and how to access it? It might provide you with some information.

Re: Siri use and data.

Anyone with even a minimal understanding of Siri and how it works would know that using Siri is going to consume some data. I suspect that advertising will promote more use of the feature, which find more 'gee whiz' than useful, although I do use it, and it continues to get better at understanding what I want. Some of the early attempts to use it ranged from amusing to annoying/frustrating. I am sure that users aren't being told that using it will increase the use of data, even though it seems inevitable to those who have bothered to understand how it works. Good marketing, in my opinion.

jeremyfrommobile wrote:

Yes, and as many times as this has been re-posted I still argue that this is not always the case. In my example the data that showed us using in a 24 hr period was more than the phone had used since it was purchased. So the data was not sent and received from the phone if the phone itself did not track the usage...

We have two 4S units doing this EXACT thing.

iOS Cellular Data stats show about 3 MB/day of usage, but AT&T suddenly started reporting over 100 MB/day of usage. It's been ongoing for a few weeks now.

We have tickets open with both AT&T and Apple. If I get info on a resolution, I'll post back.

Hi. Those are most likey broadcast or keepalive messages. Even if you are noth using the service, it sends signals to the server like tell him that the device is still connected and such. This is a normal TCP/IP process.

Nothing to worry about here. It shares the same concept too with a PC. Even if you are not doing something but you are connected to a network, you will still see traffic going in and out on your PC.

Hope this clarifies things.