iPhone 3GS is sending lots of data on its own!

call and ask?

Glad some people are seeing this as well. I found this kind of activity on my wife's phone, purely by chance, same kind of large data upload, but not limited to just the early morning hours...

06/07 12:50 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 37766KB
06/07 11:39 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7840KB
06/07 01:23 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 40060KB
06/06 01:01 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8596KB
06/06 01:36 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5100KB
06/05 01:01 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 12142KB
06/04 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 51415KB

I called ATT, and of course they had no idea, but agreed that this would be extraordinary usage, even for someone making heavy use of the browser or something. Her only suggestion was to reset the network usage settings in the phone just to confirm the amount of usage lines up with the bill (not comforting) and then to try a reset or full restore of the phone.

Haven't done either yet.

same problem with T-Mobile

have three JB, unlocked iphones (two 2g and one 3gs),,, running on T-Mobile and about four months ago one of the 2g's started uploading tons of data during the middle of the night. It was running 3.0.1, upgraded to 3.1.2 re JB and unlocked and it stopped doing the uploading. About three weeks ago the second 2g started doing the same thing, its already on 3.1.2, just when its recharging. Seems that the iphone while sleeping reverts to 3g or edge for data even when linked to wifi when "awake". The only way I have been able to defeat this is to erase apn setting when recharging. Talked to tech support at T-Mob and altho' they tried to be helpful there was nothing they could do, they were kind enough to forgive the over charge for the first 2g, but not the latest charge for the second 2g. So I upgraded the account to unlimited internet just in case the 3gs starts to do it.

I had the same problem before on my iPhone 3G,
I talked to AT&T and they gadly removed the charges i had, it was seen as text messages and sometimes data usage

The only way i fixed was adding the text message plan

06/01 02:34 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3215KB
06/02 02:18 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3450KB
06/03 02:01 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 10088KB
06/04 02:29 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 604KB
06/05 02:15 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 251KB
06/06 02:55 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 393KB
06/07 02:46 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 11180KB

WTF?

oh my god. i just checked my bill. i can assure you that i'm asleep by 11pm on most nights. yet every night at around 2am, data gets sent somewhere. and it puts me well over 200MB without even using my phone!

Only thing I can think of is this is batch report of data usage. So, every night it just "bills" the record for a bunch of smaller sessions.

Glad I saw this thread. My 3GS on Telus sends out about 15-30mb of data every morning anywhere from 2am till 5am. It's not my emails checking for updates either as I see those data usages every hour in the 30-60kb range. Now to call Telus...

This is getting really bizarre. I've identified these data transfers on my own billing detail. In my case, they occur around 11:45PM every day.

Now, here's the really strange thing:

They are not reflected in the total!

So, we may not have to worry about being charged for it, but we still don't know WTF it is.

I added up a few days of these (from 2 out of 4 pages of billing) and stopped when it exceed the total usage being shown on the account for the month.

That is, my usage so far this month is showing as 67 MB. But I added-up more than 67MB of these daily transfers going through less than half the listings.

Anybody else seeing this?

I do have Push turned on, and a few apps have notifications enabled, but I seldom get notifications. I also have MobileMe.

These tend to be 1 to 5 megabytes/night, sometimes 6-7 MB.

Do any of you have Push services turned on?

I do have services turned on, but only for mail. And I do not receive that much mail. I also have MobileMe, but again, I'm not expecting any of this to take 150MB.

I asked about this before

I've asked about this situation a week or two ago and got blasted that it was "an old topic".

My phone gets these odd transfers every night in addition to what I would consider "normal" data usage during the day.

I'm on an old 2G iphone so I dont use much cellular data at all. If I'm not on wifi then I try to avoid using data since its so darn slow.

06/07 06:04 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 408KB
06/07 06:01 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8KB
06/07 02:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1262KB
06/06 02:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1119KB
06/05 10:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 938KB
06/05 10:40 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4KB
06/05 10:38 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3KB
06/05 03:13 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 20KB
06/04 02:47 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2861KB
06/03 08:23 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 12157KB
06/03 02:18 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 234KB
06/02 09:18 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 184KB
06/02 02:37 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1038KB
06/01 08:37 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1408KB
06/01 01:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 41KB
05/31 11:36 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 106KB
05/31 05:09 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1919KB
05/31 02:00 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1305KB
05/30 02:00 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1617KB
05/29 02:00 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4203KB
05/27 10:00 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 153KB
05/27 02:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1113KB

Thats my data usage from the current billing cycle. As you can see, the majority of data usage occurs 2-3AM when I am in bed asleep.

And yes, I have push mail turned on, but only for my yahoo.com mail account. My gmail and work accounts are manual fetch only. And I dont think that I get yahoo mails overnight every single night.

MobileMe?

Is everyone here a MobileMe Member ? I started to see this type of usage after I signed up for syncing through Mobileme.

Me = with T-Mobile (in the Netherlands), and I've got no idea. But than again, I can't see how much data I use since I've got an unlimited plan.

15inchbrick said:

Is everyone here a MobileMe Member ? I started to see this type of usage after I signed up for syncing through Mobileme.

Click to expand...

That just might make sense...

I am

Maybe its updating calendar contacts mail and everything across the server...

But i thought that happens instantly... not like a back up every night kind of thing

Nope I'm seeing this too and I don't have mobileme.

It does happen instantly. And it shouldn't be that much data a night. And if it is that much data, then MobileMe has to be upfront about it and say that it basically requires the new DataPlus Pro 2GB plan.

tac22 said:

That just might make sense...

I am

Maybe its updating calendar contacts mail and everything across the server...

But i thought that happens instantly... not like a back up every night kind of thing

Click to expand...

This of course is why any data allotment of less than 1GB these days is borderline criminal. The iPhone was designed and built around the assumption that you had unlimited data, period, or at the very least a reasonable bucket, and in 2010, "reasonable" and "MB" should not be in the same sentence.

Again, it appears to me that these transfers are not included in the total, and are not being billed

Need others on ATT and other carriers to check this and see if you see the same thing.

I show 67MB total for the month so far. But I added up less than half of these nightly uploads, and they add-up to more than 67MB. Add up all the nightly transfers, and it's probably more than 2X what the account is showing for a total!

I haven't yet gone through the entire bill to add-up the full total and subtract the nightly transfers from that to see if the total makes any sense at all.

I'm the last to be a conspiracy theorist, but this smacks of surveillance or a cover-up of some screw-up. e.g. there's been some software screw-up or rogue application, and ATT has agreed not to bill for this traffic to cover-up as well as to be fair to consumers.

I have to include the term "cover-up", because you'd think there would have been some statement from ATT, "don't be alarmed about these transfers, there was some screw-up, and we aren't billing you for it."

I made a thread about privacy issues and I think this backs me up. I find it strange that our phones are sending data to a central and un named location in the middle of the night, whats in it? our locations, and our movements for the day, what we searched for on our phones, maybe the pictures we took. SO its not that I think ithis is whats going on, it is that this could be and we would never know.... But no Im sure its all analitical data for our own good, its to help us, ya thats it.

My 2:30am data usage is definitely included in my total.

jtara said:

Again, it appears to me that these transfers are not included in the total, and are not being billed

Click to expand...

chakraj said:

I find it strange that our phones are sending data to a central and un named location in the middle of the night, whats in it?

Click to expand...

Well, I'm going to try and find out.

Turns out I have a need to do some reverse-engineering and capture and analyze some data sent by an iPhone app for a project. Using the same set-up, I should be able to figure out what this data is.

Might not be tonight, but in the next couple of days.

Will need to keep the iPhone awake around the 11:45 upload time. (I'm guessing the time may vary by time zone? I'm in California. Others have reported around 2AM. Eastern?)

Have to dig-out my Ethernet switch manual so I can set it up to duplicate router traffic to another port, and set-up analyzer software to capture it.

(The router will give some limited logging. I want to see exactly what is sent, which is what I need to do with the app anyway.)

I'll see if I can find time to enter my data transfers into a spread-sheet as well. Shouldn't be that bad - it's 4 pages.

jtara said:

Well, I'm going to try and find out.

Turns out I have a need to do some reverse-engineering and capture and analyze some data sent by an iPhone app for a project. Using the same set-up, I should be able to figure out what this data is.

Might not be tonight, but in the next couple of days.

Will need to keep the iPhone awake around the 11:45 upload time. (I'm guessing the time may vary by time zone? I'm in California. Others have reported around 2AM. Eastern?)

Have to dig-out my Ethernet switch manual so I can set it up to duplicate router traffic to another port, and set-up analyzer software to capture it.

(The router will give some limited logging. I want to see exactly what is sent, which is what I need to do with the app anyway.)

I'll see if I can find time to enter my data transfers into a spread-sheet as well. Shouldn't be that bad - it's 4 pages.

Click to expand...

According to the accounts above, data is being sent via 3G not WiFi.