Mysterious Data Usage on AT&T

[George Bokros]

Last week I received an mail from AT&T that I had used 75% of my cell data usage. In the almost 2 yrs (got the iPhone on 8/31/2013) and have only had 300MB of data and never even came close to using 200MB (generally around 100 MB)of data before. I checked the usage AT&T shows and what used all the data was during the night (12:00 am to 1:00 am)this high mystery usage stared two billing cycles ago but really went nut the current billing cycle. I am in bed sound asleep at that time. I called AT&T and they said some app on my phone was dong that and suggest to clear the data usage statics on my phone before I went to bed and the next morning see what was using data. I did that. In the morning my phone showed no data usage and AT&T showed not data used. I did the same the net night and my phone showed no data used but AT&T showed a few K used just after midnight. Did the same last night and my phone showed no data used but AT&T showed a few K used at 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM. AT&T also said I need to turn cellular data off when at home because even if the I am on my Wi-Fi if cellular data is faster it will use the cellular data instead of my Wi-Fi. AT&T also said maybe my Wi-Fi was going down at night and one of the apps was attempting to access the internet at night this could be the cause. I think this is all BS. The good thing that came out of this is I changed my plan and got 3GB of data and unlimited talk and text and cut my bill $15 per month. I did find a lot of info on line about others having large amounts of data used some even whey they shut their phone off. AT&T even said one person used 9GB of data in two days and he hardly used his phone.

Anybody else experienced this?

[Steve Peterson]

When we moved to a new house, it took months to get a phone and internet connection through AT&T. During this time we were using a Jetpack internet connection through Verizon. It is a small 4G cellular box that allows you to link tablets through wifi. We used it as a backup at our old house because the internet was unreliable. It costs $20 per month for the first 5GB of data and $10 for each additional GB.

My 9-10 year old kids discovered YouTube about 2 days before our wired internet connection was finally hooked up. They managed to download 15GB of data before my wife asked me why she kept getting emails about data usage. It cost us an extra $100 that month.

Do you have any kids at the house that are sneaking your phone while you are asleep?

Steve

[George Bokros]

No children in the house.

[Phil Thien]

Maybe the phone was downloading one or more updates?

[Steve Peterson]

No children in the house.

It would have been a lot easier to solve the problem if it was kids using your phone. :)

It's scary how much personal data is available on cell phones these days. Hopefully, it is not a malicious program.

Could it be a cloud storage program or a nightly backup that synchronizes your phone? Maybe try an experiment to take a bunch of photos and turn your wifi off at night to see if your data usage goes up.

Steve

[George Bokros]

It would have been a lot easier to solve the problem if it was kids using your phone. :)

It's scary how much personal data is available on cell phones these days. Hopefully, it is not a malicious program.

Could it be a cloud storage program or a nightly backup that synchronizes your phone? Maybe try an experiment to take a bunch of photos and turn your wifi off at night to see if your data usage goes up.

Steve

No cloud backup and no synchronization of any data. I believe it is AT&T forcing you take more data service but I won, more data w/ rollover to next month(3 gb vs 300mb), unlimited talk (had 550 minutes)and unlimited text(had unlimited text) and cut my bill $15/mo.

[Brian Elfert]

On the iPhone go to Settings and then Cellular. It will show you how much data each app has used. You can even turn off cellular data for each app if you want. There is a reset statistics at the bottom of the page. You can hit reset statistics before you go to bed and then check it in the morning to see what used cellular data. I don't understand how you would be using cellular data if you are connected to WI-FI.

[Pat Barry]

I have an older phone with AT&T. Every once in a while I get the AT&T Navigator (Map) application going (unintentionally believe me) and it chews up all kinds of data usage.

[Frederick Skelly]

George, if you leave the phone totally powered off overnight, does ATT still show you using data?

[Mike Henderson]

Some applications exchange data with their server when active. I don't know all of the things they send, but your location might be one of the items. If you know how to close apps that you're not using, do that and see if your usage goes down.

Mike

[George Bokros]

George, if you leave the phone totally powered off overnight, does ATT still show you using data?

Going to do. this tonight and see what AT&T shows tomorrow morning.

[Scott Shepherd]

When you figure it out, let me know. I have a family member that has that same thing happen. They use the phone as a phone and not much more. Maybe a little bit of email, but all their data use comes from when they are in their home or office, both of which are setup as wireless networks for that phone. I've repeatedly looked into it and I'll be darned if I can figure it out. They have two phones, and this only happens on one phone. They don't have a lot of apps and even if they are playing a game of cards, it's all done while on the home network.

They get a message about 3-5 days before their bill cycle is up almost every month, with that same warning you got.

[Jerome Stanek]

I shut off my mobile data so I don't use it when out of wifi range.

[julian abram]

It's pretty simple to go on ATT's website, pull up your account turn off the data for which ever phone. Leave the data turned off a few days then pull up your useage and see if you have been charged for any data. I put our 13 yo daughter on our family plan. Gee whiz, we went from the 300mb plan to the 3GB plan to the 6Gb plan to the 10GB plan. I finally started going on ATT website and turning off her data on Fridays, turn it back on Mondays. Helped a lot, ATT loves to sell data.

[Matt Meiser]

ATT doesn't have options for managing data by line? Verizon we have a 2GB threshold set on my daughter's phone. Every few months she uses it up before the end of the billing cycle and then learns that lesson for a few months more. She gets notified at I think 50%, 75%, and then we all get notified at 90%. At 100% it cuts off her mobile data. We could do the same with texts and voice if we wanted.

There's a lot out there about phantom data usage. I have a Verizon 4G device sitting in a Cradlepoint router as a backup internet connection and I don't see it. There's a small amount of usage for the checks by my router to see that the interface is up but unless Comcast goes down there's not much usage. Been meaning to give it usage limits so an outage doesn't accidentally burn through our data but keep forgetting.

[Jim Becker]

Matt, ATTW changed the "SmartLimits" parental control application last year. We can no longer set a "data quota" for a particular phone, but can turn it off and on manually for a specific device that's on the SmartLimits list. They did that at the same time as they introduced the shared data plans. I used to dole out a specific limit for cellular data usage. It's turned out to be less of an issue now and I do use time of day control. (in addition, ToD is also enforced on the wireless network at home to insure no super late night activity)