Q: Unknown data usage early morning

"And regarding the Gizmodo article, I sent an email to Jesus Diaz (the Gizmodo author) to let him know what he reposted from AT&T's spokesperson was a lie. Gizmodo's not exactly known for their investigative journalism, though, so I doubt anything will come out of it. "

I do not believe this to be a lie. David Pogue of the ny times was the original poster of this info. gizmodo most likely go tit from him. and since it actually names the ATT spokesperson, im willing to believe it is true. But just because ATT said this, doesnt mean it is actually happening. I am being charged for my night time data transfers.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/another-iphone-mystery-explained/

Message was edited by: jev1313

Add me to the list; AT&T claims my middle of the night charge was an "updating app." 2:58am and 166MB! I have the 200MB and my account shows that I rarely exceed 166MB in a month, and never in a day.

I spoke with ATT support twice, and once while they had Apple on the other line. No resolution, but she did agree to keep my account from being charged when I inevitably go over 200MB this month.

They are going to call back in a week. Tech Support is supposed to call back sooner and explain how they are sure that this is an app.

I will add to this thread by explaining many things I have learned about this issue from many sources. These sources include tons of forums like this one, phone calls to ATT and Apple Tech Support. I will first start by saying what conclusions I have come to. The limited data billing methods ATT uses are just plain wrong. ATT is defrauding millions of customers every month who use an iPhone. Part of it, is caused by a technical design flaw in all iOS versions and all iPhones. This issue is admitted to by Apple as being "by design". The second part stems from ATT billing methods.

The larger of these two issues is the ATT billing methods. ATT regularly has stated to me that they cannot verify the exact time that data was used for a phone and that there can be a delay from when the data is used to when it actually gets reported on the bill. ATT also cannot tell a consumer what the exact data is that was transferred, example, what app on an iPhone send or received the data. Because of these two things ATT can play the ignorance card and still bill customers for data that they technically have no proof was even used. This allows them to put anything on the bill and charge for it whether or not it is a legitimate use of data. In my book this is FRAUD. If a company is charging me for a data service they better be able to prove exactly what data I use and don’t use so proper billing can happen. The basis for a data usage plan is that a company has to be able to prove exactly when and what data was used or they don’t have any legal standing to charge for that data usage. This goes for any product or service a consumer buys. No one wants to buy a data service and get charged more money if they never actually used the data service. At least that’s how I see it.

The second issue at hand here is the technical flaw in the iOS and iPhone itself. The iPhone(any version) will not send data over a Wi-Fi connection while the phone is asleep(even while the phone is on a charger). It will force all data transfers to use the Cellular Data. If and only if the cellular data is 100% not available or it is disabled manually in the settings of the phone will the iPhone send data over a Wi-Fi connection while asleep. I know this because an Apple tech told me on the phone that this is by design because "it takes less energy to send data over the cell network than it does over Wi-Fi". I stress this so much because my iPhone on average, spends about 23.5 hours asleep in my pocket or asleep on the dresser next to my bed. During the course of a day my iPhone is connected to a 100% working Wi-Fi while I’m at home and while I’m at work. On an average day my phone spends about 4 hours not connected to a Wi-Fi connection. It would be during those 4 hours that I should expect to see cellular data usage on my bill. Nope, at 2am in the morning while my phone is asleep and all app are closed(I have an iPhone4) sitting on the charger within 10 feet of my Wi-Fi router I am being charged for 100MB of data at 2:53am. Now I’m no rocket scientist but since all my apps are turned off and the only thing that could be coming to my phone are push notifications for email and the 6 apps I have that use them, 100MB is about 99MB too much. Wait, it is 100MB to much because my phone is on a Wi-Fi...err crap nope by design says apple cell data takes less energy. Wait why do I care about energy usage, my phone is on the charger, apple still thinks it is necessary to send data over the cell network even while on a charger. On top of that you can’t download an app from the appstore over 20MB on a cell network but it is ok for the phone to use 100MB at a time over the cell network in the middle of the night??? I don’t think so. Try it yourself, take your iPhone and put it on a charger within range of your home Wi-Fi and let it alone for 24 hours. Then look at your bill the next day and there will be cellular data charges for that day.

There is one sort of reasonable solution to this problem. Turn off cellular data. This will guarantee that you can’t be charged for cellular data transfers. It is not that hard to turn it on or off as needed but this is not really an acceptable solution. Turning off cellular data disables other features of the iPhone like visual voicemail.

iOS4 when it was released was said to have "persistent Wi-Fi" to enable push notes and other things while in sleep mode. This is the case only when cellular data is turned off or completely no cell signal. this persistent Wi-Fi thing is pretty much just complete and utter BS.

In iOS 4.1 a key feature was that iPods would now be able to receive push over Wi-Fi while asleep seeing as they have no cell connection. This feature was not part of iOS 4.1 update for the iPhones.

The entire point of using Wi-Fi is so you don’t have to use the slower costly cellular network.

Apple can fix this simply by adding an option to have Wi-Fi override Cell under all circumstances and adding a disclaimer that it may reduce you battery life. Hey they already give you an option to turn on or off 3G at the expense of battery life. Give the consumer the choice!!!

This is not entirely accurate. It has been established experimentally that an iPhone 4 that is charging will stay connected to WiFi and use that over cellular data in most cases.

In addition, I haven't seen a shred of proof that phones are sending data to ATT at 2am. Does anyone have any proof that this is actually happening? Billing entries that are timestamped 2am aren't proof that data is actually going out at that time.

Having said that, it seems there is still an issue where people are being charged for more data than they actually use. I haven't been able to prove that either way, so I don't have anything constructive to contribute here.

I have tested this with my phone. it sits on the charger at home and at work on a wifi connection for 20 hours of the day it also has all apps shut off. i get charges all over the place. the other 4 hours it is in my pocket while i drive to and from work and lunch and back. the apps are still turned off. i have a few push notes and push email on for one email account. that is all. and i get 10-100MB charges mostly at night but sometime during the day. it doesnt take 100 MB at a time to send email and 2 or 3 push notifications. as for your argument about billing times not being the same as when the data was actually used. that doesnt matter. if a company is going to charge you for data they should be able to legally tell you what it was and exacly when it happened. it they cant they have no legal grounds to bill you since they cant even prove it to themselves. any company that is billing a customer for a service is legally bound to provide exact details and proof of what was billed. otherwise its fraud. I would have no issue with this if ATT would tell me what exactly sent the 100mb of data on my phone. this would enable me to shut down that data transfer so it cant happen again. I can disable all notification and all location services as well as email accounts and all apps and keep my phone connected to the charger and on wifi and I still get large 5MB-25MB hits every day.

having data go over the cellular connection even when you're connected to wifi is not impossible. if you have push on, that will happen. there have been experiments earlier in this thread to show that the phone stays associated with a WiFi access point as long as it remains on a charger.

your argument that they can't legally charge you for data doesn't hold water. they do actually tell you when your data usage happened. right now, they tell you that you used X MB of data between the time the last entry in the bill appears and the next entry in the bill appears.
you could argue that the way they aggregate your data usage is not granular enough - my question then is how granular should the tracking be before they can legally bill you? should they itemize every single byte and provide the exact time (down to the millisecond? microsecond?) that byte was sent/received? i'm sure you agree that's absurd. it has been said (i have no personal knowledge of this) that the reason billing entries are aggregated into relatively coarse entries is because it used to be much finer, but that produced bills that were tens of pages long.

asking them to tell you what the data sent was is sort of sketchy. you wouldn't expect your phone company to tell you what the contents of the conversation was that they are charging you for. you might expect them to tell you who you were calling, and that seems like a much more reasonable demand.

maybe what you're asking for is a bill that itemizes each data flow (this is technically difficult to define - perhaps activity to an ip address that happens with no gap of X mins or longer) by ip address and time. that is definitely technically possible. it would be a still stretch to argue though that they could only legally charge you if they provided you with this information.

having said all of this - it seems the easiest way to dispute your bill (if you have been overcharged for the amount of data you used), is to have a screenshot showing the usage screen on your iphone. that screen shows when the counter was reset, and if your data usage there was significantly lower than what your bill says for the same period of time, i'd say you would have a pretty strong case against ATT.

But they can do this, as the below usage shows:
You can see there were transfers recorded at one minute difference, so it is possible for AT&T to record and bill details.
These are on the main line. I have 5 lines, one which resides out of my home state. The out of home line has the famous 2 AM charges. Mine, as detailed as it can be.
This is like the airline tickets: based on the moon position, and current temperature. just kidding, but i was never able to figure out the pattern on those airline tickets.

And on the out of state line, I see same minute and only one charge a day, but in other days I see individual records. like at 1:46 WEIRD !!!!

Main Line

DATE TIME TO/FROM TYPE DIRECTION MSG/KB/MIN
09/24 07:15 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 46KB
09/24 07:00 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 24KB
09/24 06:49 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21KB
09/24 06:44 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1929KB
09/24 06:38 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 50KB
09/24 06:31 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1847KB
09/24 06:23 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 19KB
09/24 06:19 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 232KB
09/24 06:00 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 53KB
09/24 05:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 532KB
09/24 05:36 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1365KB
09/24 05:09 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 11KB
09/24 05:08 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 147KB
09/24 04:50 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 24KB
09/24 04:43 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 626KB
09/24 04:32 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 19KB
09/24 04:26 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1582KB
09/24 04:24 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 82KB
09/24 03:02 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 32558KB
09/24 03:02 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5KB
09/24 02:56 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3779KB
09/24 02:08 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 282KB
09/24 01:18 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1755KB
09/24 01:05 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2

Out of state line:
09/24 12:55 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2220KB
09/23 09:55 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 151KB
09/23 01:05 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2606KB
09/23 12:21 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21KB
09/23 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 811KB
09/22 02:15 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1359KB
09/21 01:15 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1492KB
09/20 10:15 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 294KB
09/20 01:13 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 686KB
09/19 01:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2507KB
09/18 01:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3161KB
09/17 11:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1759KB
09/17 01:46 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 901KB
09/16 01:46 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4113KB
09/15 10:46 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1479KB

AT&T executive office is aware of this issue but they do not have a solution.
I have cured the massive data transfers by double clicking the home page button and deactivating anything that is running. Even the phone, contacts etc each time
you use them.
The iphone went from 53meg transfers to 500kb since in the last 3 weeks.

edit: there are still some (not everyday) data transfers up to 3meg at night even when the phone is OFF. But no where near the 53meg transfers.

My Blackberry is even doing the phantom data late at night.

{quote:title=simplyshervin wrote:}
AT&T executive office is aware of this issue but they do not have a solution.
{quote}

Could you be more specific? What do you mean by "AT&T executive office"? Where did you get this information? (And why would you expect any executives at AT&T to be able to solve issues like fixing incorrect billing algorithms?)

In regards to correct billing being impossible "by design of iOS": Apple wanted unlimited Internet and free tethering for the iPhone. AT&T resisted on both. Apple was very close to ditching AT&T and going with someone else. Eventually both companies compromised for unlimited Internet and unfree tethering. Now that AT&T's exclusivity contract is almost over, they are doing it their way, capping Internet and charging for running over the limit.

If you do the math (stats analysis): the $15/200 MB is a cash cow as so many people go just over that. Like most losing large corporations they're concerned about short term gain and the press releases they put out every two weeks that losing the exclusivity contract will not affect them is just a cloud of smoke to keep shareholders and investors in their place and not pulling away. Give it about 9 months after the iPhone has been available to Tmobile and/or Verizon: AT&T's revenues will go down, the current CEO will catch their golden parachute and AT&T will be just another cell-co on the block.

It's difficult to stay AHEAD of the curve.

"having data go over the cellular connection even when you're connected to wifi is not impossible. if you have push on, that will happen. there have been experiments earlier in this thread to show that the phone stays associated with a WiFi access point as long as it remains on a charger."

In iOS 4.1 update apple included "persistant Wifi" for push notification for the iPods while they are in sleep mode, but this was not included for the iPhone. Push notifications do not have to go over cell network as evedenced by the iOS4.1 update to the iPod. I am aware that that they will stay asociated with a Wifi while on the charger but that doesnt mean it will send data over it while in sleep mode, since my wifes phone is on wifi and a charger for 20hours out of the day i find it impossible that for those 4 hours her phone needs to send80MB of data for push updates. we did a test and turned off all her apps and still were charged for 50MB and 71MB in one day. even thought the phone was on a charger and wifi for 20 hours out of the 24 hour testing period. You can say what you want but untill you actually test your iPhone for a month to find this stuff out i have to dissagree with you.

"they do actually tell you when your data usage happened. right now, they tell you that you used X MB of data between the time the last entry in the bill appears and the next entry in the bill appears."

If that is true then how come i can apply that to my bill and find 1245KB transfer at 106am then a 79539KB transfer at 219am. this would indicate that my iPhone sent 79MB between the hours of 106 and 219am while it was connected to my wifi on a charger. sorry but that doesnt work. why wasnt that data sent over wifi. and dont tell me it was 79 mb of push. i have 4 apps that push to my phone. mail, words with friends, chesswith friends, and ebay app. I guess the phone app also but you cant turn that off af a far as i know.

"asking them to tell you what the data sent was is sort of sketchy. you wouldn't expect your phone company to tell you what the contents of the conversation was that they are charging you for. you might expect them to tell you who you were calling, and that seems like a much more reasonable demand."

I aggree and maybe i should have been more clear. I do not want them to tell exactly what all the data was but simply what app sent it. that way I can be responsible and turn off or stop the app from sending data. I pay my hard earned money for it and i have no issue with them looking at what I do with my phone. I dont care but as long as i am paying my $$$ for it i want more clrification so i can activly stop rogue or bad apps from sending data.

"having said all of this - it seems the easiest way to dispute your bill (if you have been overcharged for the amount of data you used), is to have a screenshot showing the usage screen on your iphone. that screen shows when the counter was reset, and if your data usage there was significantly lower than what your bill says for the same period of time, i'd say you would have a pretty strong case against ATT."

This is my next step and i cant do it untill oct4 at 12am as this is when the cycle begins. I will reset the counter and see what comes up over the month. however there is an issue with this method. the phones measure incoming and outgoing seperatly. i will have to compare to the numbers from the bill and see how it adds up. also i do not know if the counters on the phone measure wifi as well. we will see. i bet someone here has already done this and can tell me how to best implement the phones data usage tracking to test all of this.

Everyone says just turn off everything. i say to that theen why bother having a phone then. it is very easy to prove that something is not right about the way it is billed and the phones usage of cell over wifi. it just needs to get fixed.

Message was edited by: jev1313

jev1313 wrote:
If that is true then how come i can apply that to my bill and find 1245KB transfer at 106am then a 79539KB transfer at 219am. this would indicate that my iPhone sent 79MB between the hours of 106 and 219am while it was connected to my wifi on a charger. sorry but that doesnt work. why wasnt that data sent over wifi. and dont tell me it was 79 mb of push. i have 4 apps that push to my phone. mail, words with friends, chesswith friends, and ebay app. I guess the phone app also but you cant turn that off af a far as i know.

There is a separate issue where there are people being overcharged for the amount of data they use. You may be one of them. However, it doesn't change the fact that the bill is intended to tell you how much was used between billing entries.

I aggree and maybe i should have been more clear. I do not want them to tell exactly what all the data was but simply what app sent it. that way I can be responsible and turn off or stop the app from sending data. I pay my hard earned money for it and i have no issue with them looking at what I do with my phone. I dont care but as long as i am paying my $$$ for it i want more clrification so i can activly stop rogue or bad apps from sending data.

The phone knows this information, but AT&T doesn't know which app the data came from. I don't see any technological barriers to the phone telling AT&T this information, but even if you have no issue with them looking at what you're doing with your phone, I'm sure there is a significant fraction of people who do.

the phones measure incoming and outgoing seperatly. i will have to compare to the numbers from the bill and see how it adds up. also i do not know if the counters on the phone measure wifi as well. we will see. i bet someone here has already done this and can tell me how to best implement the phones data usage tracking to test all of this.

Just add up your incoming and outgoing and compare that to the total on your bill. The counters don't measure wifi.

Lawrence T. wrote:

There is a separate issue where there are people being overcharged for the amount of data they use. You may be one of them. However, it doesn't change the fact that the bill is intended to tell you how much was used between billing entries.

I agree and if the bill is shown in the manner you say it is then it will make that much easier to prove that i am being overcharged. it makes sense to show the bill in this way to simplyfiy the billing and not have the thousands of entries for every minute. also makes it really easy for me to prove when my phone was on the charger and on wifi yet still sending over cell. they patched the iPods so they could send data over wifi while in sleep mode but not the iphones. all apple needs to do is implement the same fix for the iPods and this whole issue will go away.

The phone knows this information, but AT&T doesn't know which app the data came from. I don't see any technological barriers to the phone telling AT&T this information, but even if you have no issue with them looking at what you're doing with your phone, I'm sure there is a significant fraction of people who do.

I agree. I dont think it would be to hard for att to implement something that could just tell you what app sent the data. recieved data may be a bit harder but since the phone knows this couldnt they just query the phone for it.

Just add up your incoming and outgoing and compare that to the total on your bill. The counters don't measure wifi.

Thats how i thought it worked. would be nice to have the phone have a separate counter for wifi. would be easy for apple to put into the 4.2 release.