Q: Unknown data usage early morning

I just wanted to recap where I've been so far.

I first noticed the late night data usage when I switched over to the metered plan. However, this was the first time I had really checked my usage as there previously was no need to on the unlimited plan. The amounts would vary, but they would always be there.

More alarming was near the beginning of my last billing cycle, where I noticed that the summary of the total data usage for unbilled activity was an order of magnitude above not only what my phone had indicated, but the total of the actual line-item data usage for unbilled activity as well. AT&T was contradicting itself. This was when I had filed a report with the FCC.

Since then, that billing cycle had closed out. I downloaded the billing details and totaled the data items. To my surprise, they actually matched closely to what my phone was telling me (through DataMan), as well as the billed amount.

Just a day after combing through the bill, I managed to talk to the Office of the President regarding my complaint with the FCC. We talked for about 10 minutes just now about both of these issues (late night charges and inconsistency amongst unbilled reporting. Here's a short summary of our conversation:

1.) Late night data items are not when data is actually transfered. Data is reported to AT&T when a data session is closed, which often happens at these late-night, early morning hours. The phone is not actually using the data at this time. (Sidenote: this could explain some discrepancies between reported data use on the phone and on the AT&T bill. Say you use 10MB of 3G in the early evening on the last night of your billing cycle, then that data session doesn't close until the first morning of your next billing cycle. Your phone would report that 10MB for last month while AT&T would show it on the next month.)

2.) He could not speak to the discrepancy between the device's reported data use and AT&T's reported data, as he does not know the specifics of how each device calculates data totals to display to the user. But they allegedly make every effort to ensure totals are correct before sending out the final bill, which might be why you don't receive the bill immediately after your billing cycle has ended.

3.) We actually went over the current unbilled data activity on my phone and all the numbers were within a few KB of what DataMan was reporting.

4.) He told me to keep his number and call if I ever had any further questions or noticed anything unusual.

The conversation was very polite and reasonable. After looking over my bill from last month, it seems many of the issues I had original noticed were resolved. The data totals lined up and the explanation for the late-night data use is similar to what others have postured in this thread. It still is a bit odd that the line-items don't always match the data total for unbilled activity, but as long as everything lines up on the final bill, I am okay with this.

+Having said all that, I still think there are issues here for people who are seeing sudden unexplainable spikes in their reported data use, and use that is several orders of magnitude greater than what their phone is reporting.+ But I'm fairly confident that these are separate issues from the one originally outlined in this thread. I really believe that it should have it's own thread started so as to not conflate the two.

Just received a call from the OOTP too. Confirming they received my FCC online complaint and we spoke at length discussing the issue of "data usage" being too much for my little bit of traffic (Email and some web page visits, very few apps - most removed).

Contact also mentioned he's seen the threads within this Discussion Group too. Also stated he's aware of other customer complaints but cannot discuss those with me because of confidentiality. While my complaint involves no loss/over billing my concern is accuracy of bill and any possible security issue(s).

The contact will get back to me and as Paul C stated, the OOTP was very professional and understood my concerns. I think we had a meeting of the minds and my OS will not update since I have an original iPhone---

Paul thank you for the info you shared and I noted that you do have the iPhone OS 4.2.1 and your data usage stats are inline as is bradley.ryan's that he reported back.

Message was edited by: BackPacker57

I too had a call from the OOTP regarding my online FCC complaint. He said the late night emissions from the phone were an Apple problem, not AT&T. I asked why one of our three iPhones, the 3G, in use for over two years, would inexplicably use double the data than had ever been used before, including 100 MB in one day. He didn't have an explanation. My daughter's 3G iPhone exceeded the 200 MB limit in September and my wife's iPhone 4 reached 198 MB in October. Subsequently, all three phones have been well under the limit for November and seem to be fine in December. Though I'm still monitoring the situation I don't have the concern I had in September & October. I did take the opportunity to tell the OOTP that AT&T's cellular network and its customer service essentially "suck."

To continue my saga with AT&T, someone called me today in response to my FCC complaint. I basically told them my data usage seems to be corrected and it appears the new IOS update fixed the problem. The person I spoke to asked if I had been charged any overages and I said outside of the first month, I hadn't. I told her I was so incredibly careful monitoring my data that the main issue was I was afraid to use the phone because I knew I would get hit with a major chunk of data usage no matter what I did. She gave me a two month data credit and asked if she could close the complaint. She caught me at kind of a bad time so I told her that was fine. Ideally I would have asked for her to give me another month just to verify everything is correct but I was still happy to receive the credit. With my fingers crossed, I'm starting to gain a little bit of confidence that my data problems are a thing of the past.

Your Apps Are Watching You A WSJ Investigation finds that iPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone users

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704694004576020083703574602.html

I wonder if this is contributing too?

While bradley.ryan posted success with the new iPhone OS 4 release--- data transmitted still racks up to data transmitted; willingly or not.

Interesting.

I'll post it again since they deleted the first one. Are there any class actions going on because of this problem?

I would rather AT&T and apple give a solid fix to this problem but so far it has been hush hush.

But they are sure quick to delete a post about a class action. The lack of response shows there is an issue they are scared to address.

bbarr97

I've spent quite a lot of time recently investigating iPhone's storage of personal data. Without going into detail you'd be amazed at how much is on there. Even after you think you've deleted emails, SMS messages, photos and apps they can be retrieved. The location data it stores is scary (even on a non-multitasking 3G): your location is logged hundreds of times a day. The device also includes a "keyboard cache" - effectively a keylogger.

You can get an idea of how much is stored by downloading an open source SQLite browser - a lot of the iPhone's data is stored in SQLite databases and the iTunes backup files are often direct copies of these. There are apps available to read these files (and a lot more besides) direct off the device, without jailbreaking. Oh, and the PIN or passcode protection does nothing to prevent this so don't lose your phone!

I haven't yet determined how much of this data is transmitted without our knowledge (that's next on my list of things to do) however presumably it's being kept for a reason. I don't know how much of this data is accounting for the mysterious high data usage people are seeing but it seems likely that we are paying for personal data to be transmitted to advertisers.

A couple of other observations:

If the data usage is personal data going to advertisers then it might explain why the discrepancy between the network operator's stats and the phone's usage counter (Apple probably don't want you to know your phone is spying on you).

Erasing all content and settings, or restoring as a new device in iTunes, does not wipe all this data. Something to bear in mind if you sell your phone or take it to Apple for repair!

Message was edited by: ed2020

done.

As for class actions on this issue I know of none.

thank you

Words of advice just do the splice nemo dot omen at rock dot com

I think the use of the parties noted earlier is not recommended and there is a better way to resolve the issues. As mentioned earlier in the postings--- do not be surprised if the issue morphs into several issues.

*WiFi and security
*Disclosure of app and iPhone behavior (billed data vs non-billed data usage)
*Apple iPhone OS improvements
*Super Cookies and TOS/Disclosures of customer information for iPhone, AT&T and all APPS (FTC)

The reason for contacting the FCC is simple, number of complaints and responses are documented bi-directionally with the FCC in the middle also receiving the respondents notice(s).

As I mentioned before, my data charge problems have completely gone away. My billing cycle started on December 12 and so far AT&T has reported 54.06 MB of data used while Dataman reports 56.4 MB. It's likely that the small amount of usage I had today has not shown in AT&T's billing yet but as you can see, the two numbers are extremely close. Furthermore, the phones data usage tracker has reported 53.6 MB. I forgot to reset it the first day of the cycle even though I had little to no usage that day.

To recap....

AT&T - 54.06 MB
Dataman - 56.4 MB
iPhone - 53.6 MB

I'm curious to know if the new IOS update fixed other peoples problems who have the iPhone 4.

I've been keeping tabs on this thread, but yeah, my problems also seem to have evaporated this month. I can't pinpoint exactly what fixed it, but I do have the most up-to-date software and have been very complain-y to Apply and AT&T too.

*thank you* and to magreen17 for following up. It appears that the iPhone OS for the newer iPhones is the fix--- there may be issues of other nature that will be explored such as the privacy concerns and app behaviors.

Still, if the community reading this thread and has different or confirmed resolution-- it would be nice to hear from you too.

IF you filed an FCC complaint-- the carrier has 30 days to respond and then by contacting you, they get an automatic extension when they say, "they will get back to you." As in my case I will report the findings when I hear back or otherwise.

bradley.ryan was "curious to know if the new IOS update fixed other peoples problems who have the iPhone 4."

It appears that it may have for my iPhone 4 and my wife's iPhone 3Gs. In my previous billing cycle (November 3 - December 3) the difference between DataMan and AT&T was

iPhone 4 DataMan 82,255 MB AT&T 132,151 MB
iPhone 3Gs DataMan 100,471 MB AT&T 117,556 MB

In this current billing cycle (which has 13 days left)
iPhone 4 DataMan 50.2 MB AT&T 56.58 MB
iPhone 3GS DataMan 41.0 MB AT&T 46.39 MB

This is the closest AT&T has been since I started paying attention in the end of October.

Just a quick note that the latest software update seems to help more than just the newest iPhones -- mine's an old 3G.