Q: Unknown data usage early morning

Well it just happened again to me also.  Exessive Data being sent for no apparant reason.

I've had my iphone 4 for over a year and never went over my 200 Mb of Data except once when my son was in the hospital out of state and I used the phone alot but I expected that. In fact many months I would not even use a third of the 200 Mb data on my plan even though I check email and use the web occasionally.  If I do use up my Data it is mostly Received Data and very little is Sent.

I am usually connected to Wifi and so only use 3G occasionally (or so I thought).

I zero the phones Cellular Data Usage Meter on my billing cycle Date and it always closely agrees with the ATT's record of Data used.  Every so often I check it to see how much Data I have used.  I went almost two weeks after my billing cylce rolled over and used about 20Mb of Data but I just checked it now and in the last couple days it Sent 130Mb out.  Received Data was 30 Mb.

This is the 3rd month this has happened.  For the first year using the phone I never had the problem.

It makes no sense that the phone would sent out this much Data for no apparent reason.  I could understand if it was downloading and Receiving the Data but where in the world is it Sending all this Data.  What is it Sending and to who is it sending it to? 

It is really irritating that I have a couple weeks to go before my billing cycle rolls over and most of my Data is used up when I have hardly used 3G at all.  Now I have to turn of Cellular Data or possibly go over my limit.

I'm glad I found this thread so at least I'm not the only person having this problem.  Just wish there was a fix. I've tried the simple stuff mentioned but I doesn't help.

I have called ATT a couple times and also Apple but no help at all from them.  After reading how many other users are having the problem I'll try calling again.

I thought i had solved the problem by closing notifications and my phone was back to its usual 5mB a day for 2 weeks.  But then it jumped back up to 5mB every time i check my emails again.  So it was up to about 60mB a day - this was half way through my charging month - same as last month.  Is that a coincidence that it is happening half way through the month?  I was hoping that the latest iPhone update would sort it but not sure yet.

as others have figured out, all you have to do is turn off Cellular Data before midnight, and leave it off all night, and it won't occur but SHAME on Apple for not addressing this!!!

brianx51 wrote:

 

as others have figured out, all you have to do is turn off Cellular Data before midnight, and leave it off all night

Yes, you won't see it at night, but the same number will appear when you turn cellular data back on in the morning. You've just delayed it, not prevented it. As has been reported many times in this thread.

not in our case here in eastern PA using ATT on WIFI at home. I'd be over my 200MB limit in mere days if i didn't turn it off but only use about half that when i turn off the Cellular Data faithfully.

i can't believe this is going unanswered with Apple even if it's not their direct doing.

Massive data transfers on AT&T -- not just at midnight

A number of people mentioned that turning cellular access off before midnight solved the problem.  Not with our son's iPhone 4s.  Here are two examples:

22-Feb    9:17 PM    phone    Internet/MEdia Net    Sent    207705KB

22-Feb    8:42 PM    phone    Internet/MEdia Net    Sent    14666KB

Note the first example -- a whopping 207 megabytes!  This also occured while he was in the hospital, so there is no chance that this was 'operator error'.

An interesting update re AT&T:  I called them and finally got through to a supervisor.  The 'data usage' report on our client account page is now unavailable.  Hopefully this means that they are going to delete all of these bogus charges.

Mark

This is happening to me as well.  I have been charged twice, two months in a row, for going over my 200MB limit. When I barely used anything at all!  I was told to turn everything possible to OFF.  So I did that.  My cellular data, 3G, WiFi... push notifications.. all of it... off. (it was already set to fetch manually, not automatically)  But they STILL say I went over!!

I don't care WHAT company is updating or sending info.  We shouldn't be charged for something we are not doing ourselves.  The only data usage that should be showing up on our bills is the data we USE; the data we're aware that we're using.  Not some random updates or whatever is happening that AT&T can't even answer!  Which I think is crap, btw.  This has been happening since 2010.  They have to know what's going on by now.

I downloaded an app that tells me, in real time, the data being used.  I'm at 2.7 MB in an hour and I haven't used a single thing but checking that specific app 4 times!  I don't remember the last time I've checked my email on my phone.  Not since they told me I went over the first time.

There's no way this should still be happenng.  It has to be AT&T being greedy because they're playing dumb and we still don't know what the heck these high kb's are being transfered to/from our phones.

My update jumped up again 2 days ago but I discovered that one of my mail accounts was not responding.   I suspended it and set up a new identical account that worked fine.  Immediately I did that the data usage returned back to normal (more like 0.1mB every time I checked my account rather than 5mB).  My data usage has now apparently returned to normal.  This might act as a confirmation of earlier comments in this thread that the usage could be caused by a fault in repeated attempts at downloading data.

How much can I trust iphone's data usage?

My wife's phone used to showed unknown data usage and most of those occured when the phone supposed to on wifi. (or when and where wifi was available - like home).

Few days ago, my daughter's phone used 34MB of cell data.  I realized that was downloading app from app store - Onavo also reported 34MB cell data was used app store downloading.  On her phone, downloading from App store was set for WIFI only.  How come this happening?  I was with my daughter when she started downloading and it was on public WIFI - signal was not good so we paused and finished at home WIFI.

I am not certain that my iphone is really restricting cell data use when it was supposed to. (other than completly turn off)

Go to Settings-->General-->About.  Scroll down to Diagnostics and Usage, pick that....then select Don't Send.  This should stop your iphone from sending data back to Apple at weird times during the day (or night). 

SkamikazeKO - I guess you haven't really read much of this thread.  The problem has been around far longer than the issue of sending diagnostics, and selecting "Don't Send" does not stop the problems.

Until a few weeks ago, I have had no problems beyond my first overage last year, and I thought I was safe.  I have absolutely no push on anything and I close all data using apps immediately when done.  I know from past experience that I can check my mail and facebook along with a few message boards multiple times a day on cellular, and still not go over.  Almost all of my data usage is on wifi.  Then, while away, having dinner in a restaurant, I texted my daughter, and within 1 second, DataMan alerted me to a 10MB cellular data usage.  Of course I checked to see if I had accidentally left some app open, which I had not.  There's no way an SMS uses cellular (or wifi) data, and it could have been a complete coincidence, but it really does not even matter.  My account got hit with 10MB cell data that I did nothing to incur.  Because I use so little data anyway, it's not going to make a difference on my bill, but it does have me on edge re future possibilities. 

I may start an online petition to Apple on this issue.  Will post here if I do.

Just found this - happening with multiple iPhone 4's at different times in the middle of the night on Verizon.  They are escalating the ticket to a higher level tech.

since apple or carriers really don't care about this, which is horrible as it costs us more money (stealing), all we can do is have everyone turn off diagnostic info.  I know that won't fix the problem but less data going back to apple to help improve issues might get some attention..maybe.  The problem has been around a while...but obviously its coming to a head now.

might this have something to do with the recent iOS update? 

Coming to a head now? Has to do with the recent iOS update? Then why does this thread start almost 2 years ago? did you see the article yesterday of a study that found that a huge number of free apps send huge amounts of data from your phone to the app site's servers?

I saw it after I posted finch, sorry to bother you.  Not all of us with questions or thoughts are fools. I realize you have no problem with buyer beware. I think one reason people go to the tightly control apple environment is because of the controls and protection. And we pay more for that control and performance. If it was an app, I want to believe apple would have required warnings on these apps as they will apparently update. When phone is on standby and so always use data. I have no doubt that as apple gets bigger it will be less, well, perfect. BUT this seems like it would be an easy warning for apple to require. That fact that they don't leads me to believe that it is the network. And there is too munch money at stake for apple to criticize a carrier.

Apple, att and the massive corporations always win. I will probably start deleting an app a day and see if i can find out if an app is causing the trouble.  My contract is up in June, so I guess the only remaining option is to try moving to Verizon. Probably have the same result, but sitting here getting porked isn't that fun.