High iOS 6 Data Usage? Turn off iCloud,

As I said before, the problem may appear with other secure connections too. You may have other services in the background. With iCloud only services on my iPhone I didn't notice anything unusual.

Ah, got it. Thanks for the clarification. Tom

Thanks and understand that there is some background cellular data usage. Prior to iOS6 it was probably 5-10 MG a month, now it is for me about 100+ MB; one day I used 12 alone. Yes my carrier lumps all my usage data at one time - it runs its billing system updates in batch obviously. You mention software that can track usage by the hour - that might help me.

What I guess is that my next step should be to disable gmail and google calander on my iPhone and monitor the data use? If it is Goolge apps, than I guess it is for Apple to own the problem and not my carrier. I still don't see how Google could demand 12 MG in one day when I do absolutely nothing.

Yes, Stan, your before and after number ratio sounds about right. For me, the background data totals 40-50MBs a month now, before, I cant say for sure but 5-10MBs before IOS 6 does sound right.

6.0.1 seems to have done little to change this discouraging kink.

Doesn't anyone else find this whole concept of trying to diagnose and fix Apple's data flaw a bit absurd? Why should anyone have to disable any features to make the phone work "as it was designed". Come on Apple, fix this!! What a waste of our time! If you are aware of this problem, reassure us and tell us that our data overages will be waived by our respective wireless carriers. This is being handled extemely poorly.

I removed my gmail account from my iPhone as per your advice. In about three hours I still used over 1/2 MG of data whilst on a wifi network; again maybe I looked at a few short emails only, so in my case there is something else going on.

I am not totally lost how to find the problem and it is annoying. I have switched off mobile data but that sort of defeats the purpose

From the tests I did I saw that it wasn't the use of iCloud that was to blame (I don't use gmail really so can't say about Google). I reinstalled the software through iTunes and set up the phone as brand new again and it's all been ok after that. I did have another "scare" since but a couple of weeks later I just think the culprit is Safari and, in general, the new iOS and new phone do like to guzzle down data more than previous versions of the software and phone.

I also installed Onavo but I found it pointless as it's very slow getting the reports, the reports are vague AND it does use quite a bit of data itself! The one thing that it indicated though was that Safari is the main app that uses the most data.

If you have any data usage limitation per month: switching off Siri is a no brainer really. And so is not allowing apps to send you push notifications and to know your geographical location when they don't need to (my best example was a Dictionary app, why does it need to know where I am? why do I need to receive push notifications from it?). Apart from that, obviously you need to switch off any syncing that uses mobile data when it's not necessary (i.e.: iTunes music and app auto-downloads).

I don't think these restrictions cripple the phone too much; this is what I've done and the mobile data usage is sort of normal again (I still have very small data "leakage" when the phone is idle and connected to wi-fi, I think this is something we have to live with, it's around half a MB a day).

In iOS 6 Safari's search is using Google through secure connection so you've the CRL checking again. Avoid using this and use Google search through http://www.google.com/ only. Not https:

Or change the search engine to Bing or Yahoo.

From my earlier post:

My son has the same problem on AT&T. iPhone 4, IOS 6, used 2.2 GB in 10 days. His phone sent 1GB in one shot on October 10. The only solution is to turn off cellular data so far is to turn off cellular data.

My son has to keep his cellular data turned off at all times. No response from Apple. No comment from AT&T. We are paying $25/month for a data plan he cannot use (it's the old 2 GB data plan you can't get anymore.) This iPhone is going in the iTrash. We'll replace it with a Galaxy S3 or a Lumia 920.

AT&T did not hesitate to refund the charges for excess data usage last month, which tells me they know more about the problem than they are saying. If your bill has an excess data charge, call AT&T and ask for a refund. It only took about 2 minutes on the phone and it lets them know they are selling a defective product.

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Doesn't anyone else find this whole concept of trying to diagnose and fix Apple's data flaw a bit absurd? Why should anyone have to disable any features to make the phone work "as it was designed". Come on Apple, fix this!! What a waste of our time! If you are aware of this problem, reassure us and tell us that our data overages will be waived by our respective wireless carriers. This is being handled extemely poorly by both AT&T and Apple. I expect more from both companies.

I have had some luck with Apple support, my issues have been escalated and a very responsible individual has spoken with Engineering and provided some interim perspective. This article is relevant but not directly related to our problem but for the technically minded worth a read because it goes to the issue of how the phone communicates with Apple servers - where the problem likely lies.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4264?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

What I am led to understand is that mobile devices communicate with Apple servers primarily over mobile data directly rather than via wifi (that is a last resort). I think this is done because many corporate environments design their systems in such a way to inhibit the communication directly to Apple servers. Apple servers drive the Notifications communications and hence notifications will use mobile data. Some "leakage" or use of mobile data in the background is therefore expected. I guess that iOS6 just uses a lot more. This explanation seems consistent with this discussion forum's comments. Our problems seems to occur across different devices, countries and carriers: members' experiements with Google, iCloud etc don't seem to yield consistent robust solutions.

So I have turned off most notifications - only phone, messages, reminders and calendars are running. I used about 500KB in the 9-10 hours since doing that. I will monitor this for a few days to see what happens.I suspect that this was my pre iOS 6 usage. If I use a lot then I will disable all notifications for a few days and see how that goes.

I enabled cellular data and everything is back to normal without google...

Thank you, Josh. The problem seems to be ios6 rather than the iPhone 5.

I have the iPhone 4S and recently upgraded to the ios6. I followed the instructions in your video, and it solved my problem.

Today with a clear mind, I saw that my assumption that the problem is on the certificate revocation check is wrong.

The main volume of the traffic was from google.com, not thawte or other certificate authority.

The problem is on the traffic between iOS 6 and google in general but It's impossible to check it because it's encrypted. 😟