WARNING: Podcasts Just Ate My Entire Month's Cellular Data

This has happened to me this morning on my iphone 4 upgraded to ios6

I made sure that the "use cellular data" setting was turned to off, but got 2 texts on my way to work

the first - you've used 80% of your data allowance

the second (five minutes later) - you've used 100% of your data allowance

Why not allow syncing with itunes?

I can confirm this indeed is the case. I have disabled cellular usage in the settings for Podcasts, Music, and iTunes + App Store. If you start downloading a podcast and switch over to wifi, the app will *NOT* respect your cellular settings and continue to download over cellular. It seems this setting is only effective when trying to start new downloads while on cellular, but is ignored if the download started on Wi-Fi and switched to cellular.

I think this is an iOS bug. The same holds true for iTunes Match - start a download while on Wi-Fi, and it will continue over cellular even if you disabled cellular usage within the settings app.

One way you could aliviate the problem is to turn off the "auto-download" feature. That way, it will only start downloading episodes when you choose to. You'll have to make sure the download has finished before you leave that Wi-Fi or else you'll have the same problem. Tap your iTunes icon and go to "downloads" to see if you have any current or pending downloads remaining.

Note: If a song or podcast episode is more that 50 megabytes, the download will *not* occur over cellular, and prompt you with a warning. That's little consolation, however, as most podcasts are less than 50 megabytes, and that limit is only for individual episodes. It will download an unlimited amount of data over cellular so long as each individual item is less than 50 megs.

I do not understad what happens after i installed , but my i phone 4 dont swich on and dont charge , dont take usb. i think he is dead😐

I had this happen as well. I received a warning from ATT that I was nearing my data plan limit only 8 days into the month. This rarely if ever happens and never in the first few weeks.

I believe that the App is repeatedly downloading podcasts. I went to it and manually downloaded the two unplayed podcasts. A day later, they weren't loaded anymore. I suspect it downloads the podcast and then deletes it and downloads it again.

I've deleted the app for now. Since they removed it from the music app, I'm now in search of a replacement.

Any suggestions?

I had the download over cell data turned off and it still downloaded. I suspect it is a bug in the app.

I have the same issue. I deleted the original app when it ate my data and only downloaded the new version when they advertised "A new setting to choose to automatically download new episodes only when on Wi-Fi".

I checkd that "use mobile data" was off this morning, then the same as jdaglish I have a warning that I had reached 80% of my data cap, then five minutes later I had reached 100%. I am only one week into the month for my data account.

I can confimr the same bug here in France with iOs6 and the Podcast. A 3Go data burned in only 3 days, thank you Apple.

Same here in New Zealand. managed to chew through over 500MB of data this morning listening to podcasts that I'm confident I already had downloaded over my home network. Use Mobile data was definitely set to off and all of a sudden I get 2 quick texts to say that I am at 80% then 120% of my 1gig allowance, which I'd never normally use half of.

I have gone through each podcast and switched off the auto-updates, and my provider has kindly said they'll credit me back what was used...but Apple really need to sort this

I've been experiencing the exact same problem here in Canada.

Podcasts do this. iTunes match does this. It seems that anything you're downloading when you leave wifi will continue. I recently switched to a larger data plan for a little bit more piece of mind, but even then I'm still using a lot of data (1.7gigs last night because of the podcast app).

How do we make Apple aware of this?

I've had the same problem here, gone through 600mb in the last 5 days while I had everything turned off and made sure to limit my data use. Feel a bit better now I actually know whats doing it, hope this gets solved though.

And you've all called Apple to report this right?

Seriously folks, I called them a couple days ago and was the first call they got.

They also said they base thier bug fix priority on the number of calls they get....squeaky wheel gets the oil.

So ALL OF YOU need to call Apple at once and report it, unless you enjoy paying overage bills all the time.

You ALL call Apple and tell them...real simple. I did and they were greatful and said they are waiting to hear from more people so they can prioritize how fast this gets fixed.

And what's their phone number?

My experience has been that the only way to report bugs is either here on these forums or sending to the black hole at apple.com/feedback.

1-800-MY-APPLE