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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Nov 5, 2010 3:22 PMby bradley.ryan,I bought a 99 cent app called Data Man which is a third party program that tracks your data usage. It breaks it down by day, week and month. It can even pinpoint where you were when you used data. It also tracks your cellular data usage as well as your wi-fi usage.
I just browsed a bunch of web sites, played around with a few apps and watched a 3 1/2 minute youtube video and the Data Man app registered 14.7 MB used. I spent more time today playing around with the phone to see what data is being recorded than I have all month on 3G. However, I have 2 separate data charges from AT&T for over 150 MB used in one day.
How can I spend 5 times longer using all the same apps and browsing the same sites and register only 15 MB with Data Man yet AT&T claims I've used well over 150 MB on separate occasions using the phone for LESS time?
I'm very interested to see how Data Man and the phone's cellular data tracker compare when my billing cycle resets on the 12th. -
Nov 8, 2010 2:36 PMby Paul Conigliaro,So just to add another fun bit of confusion, AT&T is now contradicting itself. Here is my current reported usage:
DataMan/Phone Settings: 8.6MB
Total of AT&T's data detail line items: 8.33MB
AT&T Total from usage summary: 44.71MB
So the line items are looking correct, but AT&T must have some trouble with basic math. -
Nov 11, 2010 1:03 PMby BackPacker57,"One company, Ringleader Digital Inc. assigns a unique ID number for iPhones, like a cookie. The ID number is re-spawned moments after the user deletes it. You can't get rid of the ID number which can be used for mobile tracking purposes."
Source:
Super Cookies, A Threat to Security?
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/228200269
I don't think that "Super Cookies" can account for this amount of data consumption reported in this thread and the differences---- but there's probably more that contributes to iPhone users data consumption than what is being told to users.
Just an FYI I wanted to share. -
Nov 11, 2010 2:40 PMby joenobody99,I created a blog that documents my issues with the iPhone mystery data upload. I am inviting everyone to take pics of their data usage and submit it to the Blog. Hopefully we can gain some attention and get this issue solved. Here is the link:
http://mysterydata.posterous.com/
Thanks! -
Nov 12, 2010 8:51 AMby angel_kitty86,I'm also having the same problem!
17 Sep 10 23:07:14 idata.o2.co.uk 4
18 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 421723
18 Sep 10 22:29:49 idata.o2.co.uk 21
19 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 202
19 Sep 10 22:39:38 idata.o2.co.uk 7
20 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 936
20 Sep 10 21:27:06 idata.o2.co.uk 14
21 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 857
21 Sep 10 22:33:32 idata.o2.co.uk 73
22 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 8784
23 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 18526
23 Sep 10 22:39:25 idata.o2.co.uk 29
24 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 1088
24 Sep 10 22:39:36 idata.o2.co.uk 35
25 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 647
25 Sep 10 23:11:24 idata.o2.co.uk 19
26 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 856
26 Sep 10 21:53:22 idata.o2.co.uk 51
27 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 395598
27 Sep 10 23:14:10 idata.o2.co.uk 13
28 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 21172
28 Sep 10 22:47:47 idata.o2.co.uk 9312
29 Sep 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 2484
30 Sep 10 03:04:07 idata.o2.co.uk 1886
30 Sep 10 21:37:14 idata.o2.co.uk 345
I only ever download anything over Wifi, could it be that its taking my wifi usage as data usage??
oh i'm on o2 in the UK btw
Message was edited by: angel_kitty86
Message was edited by: angel_kitty86 -
Nov 15, 2010 7:14 AMby Natedg200202,My wife's iPhone is experiencing VERY large data uploads. It has been going on since the 10th of November, roughly when she updated her iphone software.
She is on the 200mb plan, has never gotten close to going over as she is on WiFi all the time. On the 10th we got hit with an overage for a 400 mb (you read that right). It has happened 4 times since. I called AT&T and they were stupid, saying she must be streaming video (not true). Even when she has her phone plugged in, at the first opportunity when she unplugs and the phone goes to sleep (goes on 3g), it makes the huge data transfer for the day.
Apple and/or AT&T owes us around $15 (and counting) as we had to up her data plan to make allowance for these phantom data charges.
<Edited by Host> -
Nov 15, 2010 7:25 AMby Lawrence Finch,The key question is whether the phone's counter agrees with AT&T or not. If it agrees the phone is really sending/receiving data. If it disagrees by a large amount there's something wrong in AT&T's billing system (small variations are to be expected because AT&T rounds up to the nearest Kb on each transfer).
If the phone and AT&T agree you have something running that is transferring data, such as streaming radio, live podcasts, multi-player games, Safari pages that update automatically, etc. -
Nov 15, 2010 8:18 AMby rentamark,I have been following this thread almost from the beginning since I got hit with an overage charge on my 2GB plan in my first month of owning an iPhone 4. I have also been keeping a detailed log of my usage so as to compare it against what shows up on my AT&T bill. As some in this thread have noted, it appears that AT&T is doing something with their billing system even though they will not admit it publicly. The unexplained overnight data transfers appear to have subsided for the time being; at least for me. However, there is still a large discrepancy between the amount of data that my iPhone records and what AT&T reports on their web site. I have come up with a couple of ideas of what may be contributing to this and would like to hear what others think about them.
1. As others have said, I believe that AT&T rounds each transmission up to the nearest 1kB. What if the iPhone (or an app) gets into a cycle of polling a server to check for status updates where it only sends and/or receives a few hundred bytes at a time? In that scenario, AT&T would record larger amounts of data than what is actually being seen by the iPhone. (Or does the iPhone also round up to the nearest 1KB? I don't know.) This would require an awful lot of those small transfers to result in the amounts of data that are being recorded by AT&T.
2. A more likely culprit: what if AT&T is trying to send data to the iPhone and some of the packets do not get through because of network congestion and/or poor cell reception? Does AT&T count the packets that fail to arrive at their destination and have to be retransmitted? If you are in a poor reception area, as I and many people are, this could cause a huge discrepancy between what AT&T sees going out and what the iPhone sees coming in.
Maybe a combination of these two scenarios is in play. Either way, should we be required to pay for data that AT&T fails to deliver? What are your thoughts? -
Nov 15, 2010 8:42 AMby ed2020,Lawrence Finch wrote:
The key question is whether the phone's counter agrees with AT&T or not. If it agrees the phone is really sending/receiving data. If it disagrees by a large amount there's something wrong in AT&T's billing system (small variations are to be expected because AT&T rounds up to the nearest Kb on each transfer).
Why does it?
If the iPhone's counters are correct why do I sometimes see mine go down? -
Nov 15, 2010 8:44 AMby ed2020,Two very interesting theories. I suspect you may be onto something there!
A further question following on from your second theory – if an application is using the UDP protocol to send data (I believe Skype is one example of an application that uses UDP) would AT&T even know that data wasn’t being successfully delivered? Is it possible that if one end of the connection terminates unexpectedly the other continues to send data which AT&T bill for because it is still flowing across their network?
In terms of whether data which cannot be delivered should be charged for I guess that depends on the reason for the failed delivery. If it’s down to AT&T’s network I’d say definitely not. If it’s down to a misbehaving device, OS, or app then I’m not so sure. -
Nov 15, 2010 8:49 AMby BackPacker57,1. Rounding up will not create the sizable differences in data usage - this is typical of a carrier however to increase revenue on voice calls---
2. I've pondered that because of the latency is loading just email or a webpage that AT&T loaded their billing system with time vs. another metric. IF they are using time, then it may be reasonable to expect that they are guessing at consumed bandwidth. The stump is not even AT&T could be that negligent to use time as a calculator for determining bandwidth.
Faulty billing is just wrong. No one should be required to pay for something they didn't use. The sooner that AT&T, APPLE and the FCC intervenes the better. By denying any problem or over simplifying by stating it's just the apps updating or the many other reasons cited is bad business. There may be reasons but everyone needs to be on a level playing field and to understand those reasons and ramifications of using a "smartphone" on a carriers network.
Maybe the synch between DOT MAC and AT&T is the culprit. Maybe some programmer had a bad day when creating the billing system. Maybe the iPhone users are in a conspiracy to get AT&T. Seriously as to why---- why would so many users complain for no reason --- to just complain?
AT&T and Apple need to step up and put this issue to rest. -
Nov 15, 2010 6:48 PMby bradley.ryan,Backpacker,
I took your advice a couple weeks ago and filed a complaint with the FCC. After filing, I received a number to track the complaint. I haven't heard anything from the FCC and I can't figure out how to check the status of the complaint.
Do you know how it all works?
