Q: Unknown data usage early morning

I've heard about people having this problem in passing, but I've just encountered it for the first time. My Dad's iPhone 4 apparently sent 199813KB last Saturday just after midnight.  This is absolutely impossible.  He averages about 20MB in a month. 

I don't even know how someone who doesn't watch any videos, download music, has maybe 20 apps total can use 200MB of data in one day.  I cannot even fathom what could have been sent.  He called ATT and they agreed to drop the overage charge this month, but then treated him to a lecture about using his phone to do all the things I mentioned above, and how that will make him go over his usage.

They've dropped the charge, but this is somehow wrong. Whether it's a phone problem, an ATT problem, I don't know, but there's something really weird going on here. 

My wife's iphone has the same problem. Note that all of those charges are for data sent to a server, not downloaded from a server. That means that all discussions of downloading movies etc. are irrelevant. I asked AT&T tech support if they knew of any applications that upload data without the user knowing it and they had no answer - hard to believe considering how many contributors there are to this post. They tried to pass it off as location information but GPS data is less than 1k.

I would expect any application that automatically sends data to send it at regular intervals and roughly the same amount of data, so it is a mystery as to why the timing and quantity of data are so irregular. I'll call the billing department rather than customer service next time.

RE: Disable data on iphone 3g 3.1.2 Fido 4.1...(Not upgrading my Os or carrier version)

You may or may not be able to switch on or off your cellular data connectivity depending on your firmware and/or carrier ipcc. Chcn has this switch in his native settings.I do not...well DID not.

Previous settings.......................................New settings.                               

:  :

(These images were pulled off the web to demonstrate the difference in settings. The only difference from my actual phone settings being that my new settings also include the data tethering switch, between Data roaming and VPN. I believe the tethering switch disappears on some os4).

This is important if you are not on a data plan. I recently cancelled my $30.00 6g plan(times are tough) and was hit with a $40.08 charge for 2.93MB. At no time did I attempt to connect to YouTube, mail, safari or in any way knowingly (other than connectivity testing) to any data services.  Pay as you go, under Fido terms, is $0.03 perKB. I’m sure anyone who thinks “what’s 500MB...that’s nothing” could see this quickly adding up to thousands per month.

I could just add the 30 buck plan back on (if still available) but I don’t use data...wifiis fine for me...and if I do need cell data for something specific, I will just pay for what I need. Thank you very much.

My main concern, with my specific circumstances is that the phone continues to use cellular data 3g/Edge/GPRS without a convenient way to stop it.3g and data roaming toggles do not disable edge or gprs, push or location services, background apps or other daemons from running through your ipcc and remove money from your wallet. I haven’t had much success with the data toggle in sbssettings (jailbroke only) and have read that others experience this after os3. Sbssettings is one of my main reasons for jailbreaking...just an awesome interface with a tonof functionality. Humble bow to the creators.

To bring this to a close here’s my fix:

If you’relucky enough to still be on 3.X.X jailbreak get cydia (3^rd party appstore) and the necessary repos (app host sites). Download supreme preferences3.0 ver.0.9. Google all this and learn.

Restart phone. Go to settings/supreme preferences/applications/phone and switch on the ‘cellular data editing’ toggle. Now you will be able to edit your apn info under settings/general/network/cellulardata network. Copy existing info into notes app or write down somewhere. Replaceall the apn info’s with “disable”...I used this with quotes...but I think anything works.

Make sure all your push/fetch is off, notification and location services are disabled using the native (I think) toggles. I do not have Mobile Me, but it might have to be disabled. Not sure.

If you needto reactivate your connection you would have to copy and paste info back infrom your notes app or possibly just reset network settings. Myself I will use copy and paste to guard against unwittingly updating my carrier version.

I know this seems like a bit of work but not if you’re already jailbroke and you don’t want to incur any data charges. This seems similar to other apn editing apps you canget to do this but I prefer this method.

This does not seem to drain the battery.

All of the above pertains to my circumstances andlimited knowledge.

If you have been following the news about Apple's collecting location data on iPhones you may have read their recent Q & A on Location Data and seen this,

"The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple."

The key part for purposes of this thread is in the last sentence, "... tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations ..."

Apple also states in this Q&A that,

"Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years."

So, there are at least two processes running on iPhones that are collecting and sending data to Apple. Could these explain the large data transfers that many in this thread have experienced?

I realy do hope that this update solves the late night data issues that some have reported.

However I think that this has been narrowed down to carrier accumulation of data usage between restarts,although I havent seen any definitive proof.

It may in fact be both.

If you are jailbroke,there is already 3rd party apps to disable it..or you can ssh into your phone to delete the daemon,

I dont know which one but I'm sure the answer is available with a search.

I for one could realy care less if apple wants my location..as long as I.m not paying for it through data charges.

For instance,right now I'm in my bedroom at the home of my ip address..the whole web knows this (if they want).

Also your carrier always has this information.

The internet in general tracks everyone for the purpose of gathering info to send you ads that pertain to you.

If everyone fights this or opts out..suddenly all the sites your used to visiting for free will become pay sites.

Maybe that would be better..giving your credit card info to every web site you visit.

If we DO have to pay data charges for transfering this info then I'm against it.

Otherwise (for me) it holds about as much interest as what Donald Trump has to say about anything.

Just my opinion

Hi I am new here and not even an Apple user, but my wife is.  I, too jus noticed these odd data transfers at odd hours.  The largest was 49MB at 2:30am.  She has a 2GB AT&T plan, and I was plkanning to bump her down to 200MB, and was astonished when I saw the graph showing her data jumping from 92mb to 380mb from Dec to Feb.  She got her Iphone in October 2010, and this data jump did not happen until this Feb.

I looked at my own account, and I use a Blackberry 9300.  I have the same odd data transfers being sent to blackberry.net in the middle of the night, though nowhere near as much data as my wife's IPhone.  I also have individual browing sessions logged throughout the day, so it does not appear to be a consolidation of data....

I found this at 10:03pm tonight, and of course ATT closes its call centers at 10pm.  This whole thing seems off.

IF YOU LIVE THE APP RUNNING THEY ARE SUCKING DATA TO CLOSED COMPLETED DOUBLE KICK THE BOTTOM BUTTON SHOWING THE APPS THEY ARE OPEN TO CLOSE THEM COMPLETED PERESSONE UNTIL THE DELETE SIGN APPEREAS THE TAP ON THE SIGN YOU WON'T HAVE ANY MORE DATA DOWNLOADED FROM THIS APPS OR GO TO SETTING -NETWORK TURN THE DATA OFF.

I believe I have settled on the workaround that eliminates the mystery data transfers on my wife's 3GS. As the all-caps, spelling-challenged reply above states, turn off all apps from the multi-task drawer before going to sleep. I still suspect the culprit is Reeder, but it could be something else.

My wife did well for awhile, turning off some/most apps. Then she decided she didn't want to turn everything off and decided to turn the phone off before bed. All this did was change the data transfers time from 11pm to 6am when she would wake up and turn on her phone, check email, and then set it back down to get 30 min more sleep.

After getting another data warning and reviewing the logs, I asked my wife to turn off ALL apps and leaving her phone on. Voila! All is back to normal. This is consistent with my original posting in this thread. I'm satisfied. Good luck to everyone. Turn off your apps!

I also do no streaming.  I only check email, facebook, weather, and occasionally google maps.  I have never used over 130MB of my 200/mo allotment until this month.  Looking at my detailed data usage online, I also have huge, unexplained sends and absolutely no receives.  Mine occur at all times of day and night.  ATT agreed not to charge me the extra this month, but warned me not to use more data.  I'm on wifi 99% of the time.  I installed DataMan free last night, and discovered that any time my phone sleeps, it begins sending data.  I understand that when it sleeps, it shuts off wifi (unless charging,) but there is still no explanation of why this problem only started happening this month.  Even when camping last summer, with no wifi for 17 days, and frequent internet browsing, I didn't go beyond 130 MB.  The only new thing I've done is to install MyATT (like a fool, I fell for their come-on in an email,) which I have since learned always uses cellular, even when you're on wifi.  I deleted that, and still have small outbound data whenever I'm "not looking."  For example, I turned off cellular service, but to test, turned it on while typing this response.  Phone slept, woke it and took a look: cellular data jumped up from .3 KB to 6.3 KB.  Have now turned cellular off again.  ATT tech is to call me back on Friday to go over results.  I actually wonder if ATT is doing this deliberately.  The two lines on my plan that have no data plan would always get a $2 charge for 1KB of data, and I fought it and won every month.  Maybe they think this is easier.

One more thing - while on wifi, no data was sent or received that did not result from my using an app.  I tested and that's what I found, so turning off your apps is not the answer.  Also, did not turn off my apps before, so why am I having this problem now?

The line from ATT:

"And AT&T captures your data activity nightly to create a bill record in our systems. This will appear on your bill to be a late night 'charge,' but in fact, the time stamp reflects the time that your device established a connection to the network, not the time that you sent or received data."

Not sure I get that. If they only gathered data once a night, then you'd only have 1 charge by that logic. Or are they saying that for apps that are in constant communication with their server, they only get measured once?

Fishy.

Not just fishy, pure garbage.  I spoke with a so called "tech" from AT&T today.  She was reading from a script.  I was in InfoSys for over 30 years, I know when I'm talking to someone who is technical.  I have huge data usage, all send, in middle of the day - when I was not using phone, or was on wifi.  They have no explanation for why this should start now when I've never gone over 130MB before.  They just read the same canned baloney.  This is going to take a class action lawsuit to fix.  I wish someone would get it started!

Yes it is a BIG JOKE as was the response(s) from the FCC bureaucrats...

Any data collection requires BANDWIDTH and according to AT&T---- "customers don't understand how they use and consume bandwidth with their iPhones"

Guess we understand why we're being charged!