Unusual data activity on my AT&T bill

have you taken of all running in background programs?

how about twitter or facebook?

Since you have the times data was sent you could install something to watch the console logs on the iPhone and see what happened at a specific time and maybe that would reveal what app or process it was.

In the app store search for Console Log, there are some free ones that are decent.

I've been having the same problem the past few days. My wife has the identical phone and hers is fine. We've matched up our settings and I'm still having the same problem.

I'll double check all our settings mentioned above and post back . That will at least narrow it down to whether it's a network problem or just my phone.

After comparing the two phones, all settings were the same. Mine even has fewer location services on. I did go ahead and turn off everything under iCloud.

The only clue might be that under Location Services > System Services> Cell Network Search on mine there is a grey arrow indicating use in past 24 hours. This is odd since I was basically home all day using Wi Fi and my wife was out and about using 3G. Although she accessed 3G all day long, the arrow was not on hers.

It looks like the problem may be with the individual phone and not the settings or service provider.

Please post if you have any new ideas.

I came across this thread, which is almost 100 pages of iPhone users with the exact same problem. I went searching yesterday as my data plan is almost maxed out when last month I only used 21mb. Hope you get some answers...it's a really great thread full of tweaks. Hoping that some of it will work and my phone will be fixed.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2450738?start=0&tstart=0

APPLE PLEASE HELP!!!!

My son is on an AT&T plan and is also having this issue of unexplained data transfers, and not all are at the wee hours of the morning. Some are in excess of 100MB. I have heard all the theories: AT&T saves up the day's data and logs a summarized transfer at night; some mysterious app is responsible; etc. However, all apps on his phone are set for manual updates only and the unexplained tranfers are UPLOADS according to the bill. AND here is the real kicker: I have AT&T SmartLimits service on my son's phone and on Monday morning (Nov 28th) I disabled all internet service on his phone through this plan. Trust me, he has tested it and CANNOT get on the Net. So how is it that in the three days since I disabled his internet service AT&T has already logged ten data transfers OUT from his phone to the total sum of +68MB of data? His phone even UPLOADS on AT&T while its sitting in its docking station at night and connected to our home wireless.

I've read enough posts thoughout the Net to realize this problem has been going on for years! I am extremely frustrated that no one seems to be able to offer a REAL reason and an ACTUAL solution! I've only read speculations for explanations and bandaid solutions to "reset the phone to factory settings" or "disable data transfer AT the phone" which obviously negates the entire purpose of having a smart phone.

Try disabling or removing your e-mail accounts for a while. This seems like it may be an Exchange account that's having problems syncing or authenticating that just keeps re-trying.

We will try that, but this is a new/recent problem and my son's email account and usage has not changed in the 6 months he has had the phone. He does not have an Exchange account. He does have a gmail account linked to the phone. He rarely uses his email... we're talking less than a dozen emails per month.

I also do not see how such large data transfers can be explained by email syncing! His entire email mailbox only uses 22MB! Further, wouldn't syncing result in a transfer of data INTO the phone? All these transfers are OUT.

I have this issue and so does my wife's iPhone. I believe it all started with ios 5. Here's what I can tell you what I've discovered:

iMessage and Siri will use 3G data regardless if you're connected to wifi. The only way to keep it from using 3G is to turn off cellular data. This occurs on our two 4S's and every 4S on display at our local Apple store. It's not a lot of data, 1-2k per iMessage and 7-17k per Siri inquiry. You can easily test this by clearing your usage date, send an iMessage and go back to your usage data. 2k used. Same for Siri.

The next thing I can tell you is that the 3G data usage reported on my phone is always about half or less than what AT&T reports in their detailed usage. This is an obvious bug.

Lastly, after my testing, it appears that the phone will go back to using 3G data when it should be using wifi. Like when it's plugged in and you start apps updating on wifi you may find a large data usage on 3G the next day. This seems to be hit or miss though.

I've filed the bug reports with apple and I suggest you all do the same.

Http://www.apple.com/feedback

Yes, but IF his gmail account is having a problem authenticating (much more likely than you would think, especially if he rarely looks at it), it could be continually re-trying in an effort to get his new mail. Even if there is no new mail to get, the authentication requests will continue.

Similar issue here, AT&T has threatened to cut me off! High data usage by phone late in the PM but I have wifi at home...