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iTunes Accounts using large amounts of data

Hi, I don't understand but for some reason my data usage for my iPhone 4S jumped DRAMATICALLY just in the past few days. I somehow used over 2 GB of data on my 4G cellular network with just a little web browsing and about an hour of music streaming (something I also do, but typically have about 2 GB is one month -- not three days).


Went into my Cellular usage and found that iTunes Accounts had used 5.6 GB over the past two or three months (I hadn't reset it) and wondered what the heck was it doing? I never download apps or update apps unless I'm on WiFI.


So I reset my celluar data and, again,without doing ANYTHING on the App Store in less than 15 minutes, my iTunes Accounts under System Services had used 51.4 MB of data. Over 50 MB in just 15 minutes without even opening the App Store?


What could this be from? Even iCloud functionality shouldn't be using that much and it hadn't updated since yesterday on WiFi.


Any suggestions on what could be going on and how to stop it?There's no way I could have used 2GB in just three days with as little as I use it for webbrowsing, etc., off of WiFi.

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.0.6

Posted on Mar 10, 2014 12:12 PM

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31 replies

Apr 7, 2017 7:15 AM in response to Green-lobster-infiltrator

That's really interesting. So it's possible that some apps are somehow sending data through Apple services so that's the data usage is attributed to "iTunes Accounts" instead of the app.


For people who have noticed this happening, do you have various analytics options enabled under Settings > Privacy > Analytics? If you turn everything off (and maybe reboot the phone to make sure it's taken effect) do these apps still cause the iTunes Accounts data usage to spike?

Mar 21, 2017 10:43 PM in response to Jbg99

Just suddenly hit this a few days ago after literally *years* of never seeing this problem. My 'System Services -> iTunes Accounts' cellular usage blew threw 4GB of data in a single day. It's slowed down, but still has consumed another 1GB in the last couple of days.


I tried an online chat with customer support, but they seemed to claim that this is 'normal' and that I should switch off my cellular data if I don't want to it to be used. *smh*


Genius Bar appointment tomorrow to see if someone there has a clue. It's boggling that this issue has persisted for this long and has not yet been addressed by Apple.

Mar 23, 2017 8:43 PM in response to Jbg99

Spoke too soon, ITunes account used 99 MB in 15 minutes the other day while I was reading emails. Went to Genius Bar today. Guy gave me BS line 'this is normal' so I asked him, while signed out of absolutely everything, and iTunes closed, that this is normal cell data usage for iTunes accounts? 400 MB per hour? Really? He convinced me to wipe my phone, not restore with backup, conceded it may be a bug that came with my backup. Such fun reloading all my apps and resetting all the passwords I can't remember. Over 8 hrs of my life wasted trying to find solution so far, to an issue it seems is known but maybe to rare to care.

Mar 28, 2017 2:02 AM in response to Jbg99

After nearly four weeks of dealing with Apple Care..... still not fixed :( . We have now tried some debugging thingy. I've sent all the files to them today. Hopefully get an answer within the next few days. It is by no ways normal for iTunes accounts to use that much data. From what I can gather the Techs have no idea what is causing it. But I won't be letting go until I have a fix.

Apr 1, 2017 11:59 AM in response to Eaglesboy

I found something maybe interesting. Most time I don't play Candy Crush in my lunch time, but about few days before my billing cycle date, I played it at my lunch time which was not over 15 minutes. Just in few minutes of play, I got text message from my carrier FIDO, but I thought it was just junk message, however after few minutes, I received it again. Then I stopped play and opened message. And surprise was that first message told me I had used about 91% of data of the months and second one told me that I reached 100%. I turned off my Cellular Data right away, the 2 messages were about 9 minutes apart. I checked my setting, 100% sure, Candy Crush was turned off to use Data and there was not data usage for it at all. There were couple hundred MB usages increased in less 15 minutes and all under iTunes Account. DO NOT know why Candy Crush can steal the Data even it was set to not use? Then I checked back my records for data usage, for those days with very high usage of data, I might play Candy Crush too. As I have reached 100% of usage this month, I will try/test next time if this situation happens again nextmonth. Or someone can make a try? Thanks.

Apr 3, 2017 11:09 PM in response to Johnyao

I totally agree! 5 minutes of Candy Crush can eat at least 50mb of data! I too have turned of data for Candy Crush so I really don't know how or why it is using so much data. I've lost over 1Gb to 'iTunes Account' in the past week and I could not seem to find out why until I read this post. I only started noticing this after the latest Candy Crush update and this has never been a problem before. This is quite a nuisance. I either have to not play Candy Crush EVER AGAIN or live with data switched off. I hope someone can resolve this problem promptly.

Apr 5, 2017 5:09 AM in response to Funbobby

So I have had this problem with the iTunes accounts data usage for some time now. I monitored the data usage for a couple days, even with candy crush data toggles off, and it still was rising. I deleted the candy crush app completely, and now my iTunes account is eating data in the kb, instead of mb or gigs. It seems the problem is fixed. ***** bc that's my go-to game... I read somewhere a couple days ago that some apps, even with the data off, can still eat data because iTunes will constantly be checking to see if an update is needed. That's all I can come up with here. RIP Candy Crush...

Apr 8, 2017 8:47 AM in response to alvaror88

My current theory is that it is a bug in the Podcasts app. I've noticed lately that sometimes when downloading podcasts over cellular, the podcast downloads make no progress for a long time. This seems coincident with the times when my carrier reports huge data usage. I think Podcasts is chewing through my data plan with some sort of failure/retry loop. The bandwidth bytes used only get charged to the Podcasts app for successful downloads. The unsuccessful downloads get charged to iTunes Accounts. I have now turned off all cellular data for Podcasts to see what happens.

Apr 14, 2017 5:30 PM in response to Llamahunter

Hi, my issue has been fixed....iOS 10.3.1 fixed the problem. No longer is "iTunes accounts " using up my data. I can play Candy Crush whenever I want to. I don't use podcasts so I can't comment on that. So after six weeks of phone calls to and from Apple Care and doing all the things that wanted its fixed. Their thanks for all my time and patience was a new Data cable .. hope everyone else's problems have been resolved also.

Mar 10, 2014 12:31 PM in response to awp69

That is why I suggested the Reset All Settings Reset. It will mean that you have to go in and turn on the settings you know you may have switched on or off, but it often clears up stuff like this.


Also turning off anything running in the background might help, double tap home button to open multitasking screen and swiping up on the screen shots will shut them down.


Then restart the phone, hold down both Home and Sleep/Power buttons at the same time and wait for apple logo to appear.

iTunes Accounts using large amounts of data

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