Unknown data usage early morning

gugabackahnd wrote:

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.

Thanks for the kind reply, but I'm a network admin and 100 MB per day of keep-alives (3 GB/Month) is never, ever, normal.

Luckily for me, Apple agrees and they are working with AT&T to track this down. In case you missed my earlier numbers, currently AT&T thinks the phones are using about 3GB per month, and iOS says it's closer to 100MB per month.

I seem to have the opposite problem. I was travelling overseas in the last couple of weeks, so I reset my data statistics as I left the USA. I got the 50MB International Data plan, and I can usually stay under that. I frequently monitor my usage. One day, I noticed I had about 23.6 sent, and 6.7 recieved. The next time I checked, I saw that the numbers had been REDUCED to 18.3 sent and 5.4 recieved! This had never happened to me before, and I wasn't sure what to do. I should have taken screen shots, in hindsight. I continued to use data, going by the new numbers, thinking that perhaps something got messed up and they issued a correction to me. As it turns out, I then went over my data plan by about 4MB, resulting in extra charges. I went online to inspect my bill and detailed usage, and indeed there were 54MB of documented data used. My phone never caught back up to reflect the actual total.

I guess the lesson is to use the app to check data, however sometimes can take up to a few days for the usage to post. Has anyone else heard of this issue? Any solutions or suggestions??

I use international data plans fairly frequently, and I've never seen the problem you describe. Usually my billed usage is a little lower than the usage display on the phone shows. But I also check my usage on AT&T's site (using their app) on a daily basis when traveling. In the UK at least it is never more than 1 day behind.

I am having the same issue!

I have been keeping an eye on my cellular data usage via the settings menu, as well as having the data man app installed which is supposedly meant to keep a track of any data that is uploaded or downloaded to my phone via the cellular network.

However on checking my vodafone bill, I have noticed that despite paying a regular monthly fee for my 500MB a month I am still being charged a fixed daily rate every day (and have been apparently since setting up my data package in december 2011!!!).

This is curious, as according to both my data trackers, I have not come anywhere near my maximums (in fact, over a five month period have only actually downloaded 350MB of data according to my settings menu). I can understand them being a few megabytes out, but not a few hundred megabytes out.

So, I took a look at my vodafone account on line. And every night there seems to be a late night download or upload of information about which I am unaware. One of these, on the 26th April (whilst I was tucked up in bed asleep) there was a transfer of 350MB of data!!! This is way more than I would ever have used myself, and can't imagine what this could have been.

Aside from draw something and a few other apps, I do not have push notifications activated as a rule, (and surely this would appear under my data usage, if it was happening?).

I do not want to turn off cellular data completely as my hubbie and I use imessaging a lot and it is the only way we can tell that our texts have actually arrived at their destination. We don't use facetime, I don't download films, or television via my phone at all, let alone using my cellular data. Likewise I don't use skype or anything similar via the cellular network. I did try vyber for about a minute but was totally unimpressed by the quality, so this could not count.

I have actually noted quite a few data transfers to or from my phone at times when I was not anywhere near the phone.

My main query is that surely if this data is being transferred, surely the data tracker should be clocking it? If not the dataman app, then the main usage tracker on my phone? If not, then I don't see the point of having the tracker at all.

If anyone could shed any light on this, that would be great.

I was curious to see that a chap had also mentioned a massive 350MB type data transfer on the 26th April via his O2 account as well... has anyone else had this particular lump of data appear on their bill, and does anyone have a clue what it could be? None of my apps update automatically, I get notifications that there is a new version available, and then I download it via my laptop. Likewise, I check for software update via my laptop every so often too.

Thanks in anticipation.

I have read this entire thread with some interest, as it perfectly describes my recent experience with my ipad 2.

I didn't update to ios5 until three weeks ago, since I use an android device as a handset and the ipad doesn't do OTA updates. I keep close tabs on my data usage, and starting the day of the update, the ipad would send between 100 and 200 megabytes of data every night between midnight and 2:00 am. This is on Verizon. It quickly ate up my entire month's 2gb quota. I reset back to stock after backing up my apps and settings. No change. I tried disabling every location setting and all of the apple reporting services. No change. I'm trying to avoid going app by app to find out what is causing this problem, since i use the ipad for a number of work-related purposes through dropbox and outlook syncing. It's almost comical to me how few monitoring apps there are for apple that let you track app data usage (I think dataman is the only one, and it doesn't have sufficient granularity to find the problem).

At the genius bar, the tech only scratched his head and said "I've never seen this before. Wait a few days and it should go away." Verizon trains its CSRs even less. It is, to say the least, extremely frustrating.

I have identified my issue. I don't have a resolution yet, but I'm very confident that I've isolated the cause of the massive discrepancy between what my iPhone reports for Cellular Data Usage and what AT&T reports.

So as to be clear, my issue is a huge disparity between AT&T's data usage numbers and iOS data usage numbers. iOS will report 5MB in a day, AT&T may report 100MB in the same day.

I have an AT&T Microcell at home. It's this device that's overreporting data usage. If I kill it, I can still get 3G data from a tower. Not as many bars, but it works fine. Without a Microcell, the iPhone and AT&T agree on data usage.

With the Microcell turned on, the AT&T numbers are inflated as much as 15 times. I've reported my findings to AT&T and Apple. It's only affecting the two 4S units. So my guess is that there's a firmware issue on my Microcell that's unhappy about the 4S, iOS 5.1, or the fact that AT&T recently rolled out HSPA+ in my area. The problem began March 13 and I can duplicate it whenever I want to.

It's out of my hands now - This is something only AT&T/Apple can address. Meanwhile, I'll probably de-register the two devices from the M-Cell to get things back under control. This may not apply to a lot of the posts in this thread, but it may apply to some - which is why I'm following up.

Mysterious and massive data usage on AT&T with iPhone 4s:

We ran into the problem many people have mentioned with our son's new iPhone 4s. After numerous calls to AT&T and posts on their support portal, here is what I have found:

(1) AT&T bills with large data transfers in the middle of the night: Here is an example from our current AT&T bill; you have probably seen similar charges on yours:

Note the size of the transfer -- 65 megabytes -- and that the data was "Sent", not received. (This was not due to our son downloading movies etc.) The total is also curious; there is not 65 megabytes of data on our son's new iPhone 4s, so an application could not have sent 65 megs of files, even if it was running in the background. 65 megabytes would equal over a million text messages or hundreds of songs.

This gets even more mysterious, however. We first noticed the problem when our son was in the hospital. His iPhone was turned off and was not charged up. When the AT&T bill arrived, it included hundreds of megabytes of data transfers -- from an iPhone that was not operating! An AT&T customer service supervisor did agree to remove the charges when we called, but this does not explain why they appeared on our bill in the first place.

(2) AT&T's explanation: Initially, AT&T customer service and technical support reps said (a) our son was probably downloading movies and other large files, and (b) 'data hogging' apps are running in the background, blasting large quantities of data.

On their customer support portal, AT&T employee / moderators now say that these late night charges are an artifact of their billing system. Data transactions throughout the day are rolled up into one charge that is posted in the middle of the night. This does not square with our bill, however. For example:

If all of the data transactions on 4.30 were "rolled up" into the 24 meg charge posted at midnight, why is the small transaction shown at 5:55pm? There are many similar examples in our bill. See if you can find similar small charges in yours, followed by the 'big chunks' late at night.

(3) WiFi vs cellular data connection when an iPhone goes 'to sleep': If your iPhone is linked to WiFi for data, it will automatically revert to a cellular connection when it goes to sleep. (When the screen goes dark.) This is apparently true even if the user turns cellular data off before the iPhone goes to sleep. According to AT&T, the WiFi connection will be maintained, however, if the iPhone is plugged into a charger. (This sounds like a 'feature' that Apple needs to fix.)

(4) AT&T Smart Limits: AT&T markets Smart Limits to parents, and the main page on their website includes a big green check claiming that you can limit data usage on your child's phone. See: http://www.att.net/smartcontrols-WirelessParentalC​ontrols We purchased this feature, but it does not work. I receive repeated 'limit exceeded' alerts via email -- but the data charges keep coming.

(5) Are apps responsible for large data transfers? When we asked about solutions, AT&T reps suggested (surprise!) that we upgrade our son's data plan. So we ordered a copy of DataMan Pro. I found that the current version does not, however, report the total data transferred by an application during the day. Then we tried Onavo, which provides more detailed reporting. I am currently monitoring data use with Onavo, with the compression feature turned off, to compare against AT&T's bill at the end of the current cycle. I will report the findings on this board in a few weeks.

(6) Booted from AT&T customer support board: Today, I tried to post answers to three questions about excessive data usage on AT&T's customer support portal -- with the information included above. Within an hour, a moderator quickly pulled my posts and sent me a message, claiming that I was "spamming" and "flooding" their board. (3 messages = spam??!!) They then disabled my account due to "violations of the appropriate use policy". Apparently AT&T is sensitive about this issue! I told the moderator that I was simply trying to help other people struggling with the same problem. He did not reply.

Markk Hays

The same is happening with Vodafone here in Egypt.

My phone has registered a grand total of 450 mb of transferred data via the cellular network since the 27th December 2011. I have not reset it, as I have wanted to show just how vast the discrepancy is.

On my Vodafone usage page, I saw in one night 350MB of data transfers registered... whilst I was asleep, and none of which appears on my phone's data counter nor in my Dataman app. I can understand it being out by a few megabytes, but we are talking hundreds and hundreds of megabytes out.

I have taken to switching off my cellular network whenever I have access to wifi or am asleep, but this is a real pain to do every single evening. And I noticed yesterday that as soon as I switched the 3g and cellular data back on in order to access the internet, a whopping 88mb of data was instantly registered on my vodafone bill. Why hadn't it been transferred whilst I was connected to the free wifi earlier?

I have been in touch with Vodafone Egypt who have graciously given me a small credit on my bill as a good will gesture, however I am still seeing the random transfers happening when my cellular and 3g is switched on. I must confess to playing drawsomething on occasions, but can this seriously use up 88mb?? I doubt it. The one location setting that I have active is my "find my iphone" app, for obvious reasons. But I bought an iphone in order to take advantage of its fantastic capabilities, not to have to switch them all off.

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what could be causing these issues? I have seen so many posts regarding this so it is quite clearly a major problem.

Same problem here. I have 5 phones on my account and here's the data from the last month.

iPhone

Cellular

Data

Usage* AT&T % Difference

_______ _______ -------------------

iPhone 4S 858MB 3,508MB 308%

iPhone 4 178MB 229MB 29%

iPhone 4 72MB 72MB 0%

iPhone 4S 114MB 1,705MB 1395%

iPhone 3G 122MB 266MB 118%

AT&T data group is clearly denying this, claiming that they can't confirm that what the phone reports is consistent with what AT&T sees. Note that a different group in AT&T did speak with Apple and confirmed that usage on the phone via *Settings, General, Usage, Cellular Data Usage (reset at the beginning of the billing period) should match AT&T's systems.

We need someone from AT&T to dig in to this and confirm whether their data collection is accurate.

jbeir wrote:

We need someone from AT&T to dig in to this and confirm whether their data collection is accurate.

Well, I'm afraid they don't care. I've had many conversations, both electronic and by phone, with AT&T over the past few weeks. They'll blame Siri, a rogue app, just about anything they can think of (or is scripted for them) but each and every one of them seem to be incapable of explaining the huge discrepancy in data numbers. When I finally found someone willing to believe me, they "escalated" my issue, which came with a promise of a callback. No call. No surprise. When the questions get difficult, the standard response seems to be no response.

That 1395% number is about what I'm seeing on two of our four iPhones, both 4S models. March 13 was the big day on both units, as far as when the carrier numbers suddenly started going through the roof. I'm still working on trying to fix this on my end, but I don't know how I'm supposed to do that when I strongly suspect mis-reporting on the part of the carrier.

Another update from AT&T re billing -- but no clarity:

I received another reply from an AT&T employee regarding the large and mysterious data charges that are hammering our iPhone data plans. In a nutshell, he said that AT&T's billing system can aggregate data transactions (a) for a variable period from 24 to 72 hours, and (b) the time when aggregation starts and stops is not apparent -- leaving some small transactions untouched. The posting of charges can also be delayed by 2 to 5 days, for transactions on AT&T's network.

If this is true, AT&T's billing for data is a 'black box' that cannot be deciphered or audited. A client cannot determine which data transactions are included in his / her AT&T bill, and cannot accurately match the AT&T total to the iPhone's internal log or third party applications, e.g. Dataman and Onavo.

Anomalies also abound that throw the AT&T explanations into question. For example:

(1) Tlhree large transfers within 16 hours. Why so close together? (And notice the size of the last one.)

(2) A large data transfer at midnight -- followed by another the following night, with small transactions in between. This would violate the minimum "24 hour" rollup scenario:

A number of people have also noted that the mysterious data charges seemed to disappear after they upgraded to a larger data plan. Upgrade and pay more, and the problem is fixed?

All of this is puzzling and curious. AT&T reports every individual call and SMS message, with the date and time. One of my son's bills included an itemized list of 2,500 messages, for example. Why are only data transactions buried in totals that no one can understand or audit -- including AT&T customer service and tech support reps?

If any other business did the same thing -- adding numbers to your bill with no explanation -- what would the public say? Why is this acceptable?

Responding to your suggestion that the Microcell might be the root cause. I also have a Microcell at home (actually 2) and also see the problem primarily on my 4S phones running iOS 5.1 (released early March) which is when I started getting these over plan alerts.

With two more days left in my billing cycle I checked the usage statistics posted by AT&T and compared them to the numbers recorded on my 4S and the wife's 3GS. For some unexplainable reason, the phones showed MORE data usage than did AT&T (54.47/57.2 & 55.36/60.7 respectively)!! Both of us recharge the phones at night prior to going to bed. Once charged or nearly charged, we turn off WiFi and Cellular Data and close out all the apps. As I pointed out in a post a week or so ago, I've even restored my phone and removed all Apps outside of DataMan Pro, Onavo, and Activity Monitor thinking there might be a rogue one in there. Little or no change in what DataMan and Onavo report despite that. Onavo shows an increasing amount of data being sent to or exchanged with "AppleIDXMLRPC" to the tune of 5.52MB since the 25th of April. As I said in the earlier post, I have no idea what that might be but suspect something iTunes related. I DON'T use my phone as my portable computer, I am retired and spend 95% of my time in or around the house. I have WiFi through which I use my MacBook (kitchen/garage) and iMac (upstairs).

That brings me to the following occurrence which I noticed Friday. I opened the MacBook to check email and saw that Gmail was reloading very slowly. Right after that I went to Yahoo Finance and checked AAPL, again loading very slowly. Closed the lid and walked into the living room where the DSL modem and Airport reside. The DSL modem was furiously flashing away, indicating that data was being sent or received. With the MacBook closed, the iMac upstairs sleeping, the only other device that could be doing it was my 4S as the wife was 500 miles away with her phone and iPad. WT. . . . .Heck??

P.S. I change the Airport Extreme passwords every couple of months so the possibility of someone jumping on it seems pretty remote. Besides, there are four families living on 9 acres of woodlands, the closest house being about 200 feet away.

I turned our MCell off for 3 full days. During that period, iOS agreed with AT&T on data usage. I then turned it back on and again saw huge numbers from AT&T that iOS did not support. This, along with data showing that when I was out of town, there was no discrepancy either, leads me to believe in my case it's the MCell. I think I know "what" but I still don't know "why" and AT&T has shown little interest in digging into it.

Sim swap is an option and I'll do that if necessary, but I remain unconvinced that the sim is the issue, given good behavior away from the MCell. On a side note, I did update one phone today to 5.1.1 just in case that resolves it. Time will tell.

@JES42 - slightly higher iOS numbers I would consider normal, since AT&T can take time to post usage for a prior day. That XMLRPC traffic might be Diagnostics & Usage data. You might want to see if that's enabled on your iPhone. You can turn off the automatic reporting if the data starts adding up.

Turing off the reporting was one of the first things I did after getting the 4S in February, in fact, everything is turned off. I've got what is essentially a "dumb" phone in my pocket - phone calls & normal texting until I turn cellulr data back on some time during the day.