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

[Krevnik]

Wow. When you put it like that, well, gosh, you sure set me in my place. Good thing we have a few well degreed people here to fill in all the blanks for folks like me who manage folks like you.

I don't care what the data is - even if it is data summary being sent to AT&T - its being sent by the OS and the OS isnt picking WiFi to send that data. Even if we were to go as far as to say its some background app that Apple has allowed to be installed as part of the OS, again, I put the emphasis on Apple for quality control since it has final say over what goes into the build. That AT&T is sending this data to itself should indeed not count against users, but it is.

Doesn't take a degree to know that we've getting screwed here. If AT&T wants that data, it shouldn't be including it in a rated data plan.

The point is that the timestamp is the time of the data usage report. Not of the usage itself. A very important distinction. That is the huge part you failed to get from this.

Is it stupid their billing system uses a method that is horribly outdated and can lead to the confusion in this thread? Sure. But I have yet to uncover evidence that billed data exceeds used data.

And honestly, if I had a manager that made a comment like the one you just did (pre and post edit, gotta love email subscriptions to threads), I'd quit. I don't need a manager that ignores the expertise of their people. A manager manages people, and understands why they themselves are not in the trenches.

 

[Sherifftruman]

I had been noticing "zombie" data usage on my iPhone 3G as well. It happened all day and night and added up to at least 200 meg a month probably. I assume it was email checking for the most part. The main issue is the fact that you can be in range of WiFi at home and at work, so all day and night and it still drops back to 3G when asleep.

Since I got my iPhone 4, I guess they changed it in iOS 4 because now, it stays on WiFi as long as I am in range and my data usage has dropped way down. Like a tenth of what it was when I am around WiFi all the time. UnlessI get a text or somethign, it will use 0 kb overnight, whether it is charging or not.

 

[packetjunkie]

(pre and post edit, gotta love email subscriptions to threads)

Glad you got my message. ;-)

If I had an employee presumptuous enough to think he knew more about technology than I did and felt a need to point it out, it's unlikely they'd have a chance to "quit".

 

[wvphysics]

Glad you got my message. ;-)

If I had an employee presumptuous enough to think he knew more about technology than I did and felt a need to point it out, it's unlikely they'd have a chance to "quit".

Being a manager means nothing about your knowledge of technology. If you do know more than those you manage it's your past experience and education. Managing personnel is completely independent. Belief otherwise is simply a compensation of insecurities.

 

[packetjunkie]

Being a manager means nothing about your knowledge of technology. If you do know more than those you manage it's your past experience and education. Managing personnel is completely independent. Belief otherwise is simply a compensation of insecurities.

I'm pretty sure you thought that sounded like a "smart" response when you wrote it, but it misses its target by a mile.

 

[wvphysics]

I'm pretty sure you thought that sounded like a "smart" response when you wrote it, but it misses its target by a mile.

No, not really. "Manager" can have many different duties, they can include managing personnel, technology, projects, etc. Some
Managers have technical responsibilities some are purely non-technical, thus the only thing "manager" days for sure is ability to manage some sort of resource. If you have reason why being a manager means being more knowledgable I would love to see it.

 

[packetjunkie]

No, not really. "Manager" can have many different duties, they can include managing personnel, technology, projects, etc. Some Managers have technical responsibilities some are purely non-technical, thus the only thing "manager" days for sure is ability to manage some sort of resource. If you have reason why being a manager means being more knowledgable I would love to see it.

It would appear you are having a discussion with yourself regarding managers in general.

 

[wvphysics]

It would appear you are having a discussion with yourself regarding managers in general.

Just enlightening the uneducated.

 

[packetjunkie]

Just enlightening the uneducated.

Yep. You showed me. I feel so much more knowledgable about the subject now. Thank you.

 

[Luminyx]

I actually had this happen to me too. I called AT&T two days ago and they said that the time stamps are not that accurate and could be off by like 24 hours or so I have those 2 AM charges too, when I was clearly on wifi (3G off) and sleeping at the time. But then I check at times where I DID use it, and sometimes there no charge at that time when I know I used a decent amount of data.

 

[IndustrialSpace]

Being a manager means nothing about your knowledge of technology. If you do know more than those you manage it's your past experience and education. Managing personnel is completely independent. Belief otherwise is simply a compensation of insecurities.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Read about TPS (Toyota Production System) or "Lean Production," as it is generically known. One such book is "The Toyota Way" by Jeffrey Liker. How a company should be run and what managers should know.

 

[elistan]

Doesn't take a degree to know that we've getting screwed here. If AT&T wants that data, it shouldn't be including it in a rated data plan.

It DOES take an inquisitive mind, however, to discover that data usage being reported at 2am is NOT happening at 2am. It's happening between 2am and either the next time your phone's connection is reestablished or about 24 hrs later, whichever is soonest.

So for example, if your AT&T data usage report looked like this:

July 8 2:01am - 3,456 KB
July 7 5:30pm - 22 KB
July 7 2:00am - 16,384 KB
July 6 11:30pm - 35 KB

That would mean that between 2am and 5:30pm on Wednesday the 7th, you used 16 MB of data. Your phone did NOT send 16 MB all at once at two in the morning. (And it would further mean that at 5:30pm you either rebooted your phone, put it into airplane mode then back out, dropped the connection in a low signal area, or similar. It's still a matter of speculation why the early morning times are showing up - perhaps AT&T is simply doing a billing cutoff, or perhaps the connection to the phone is reset from the network side of things which then triggers the billing cutoff - but the why of the 2am entries is immaterial because we've already establish that we're being properly charged for our data usage.)

Best wishes,
That IT guy with a CS background

 

[Krevnik]

Glad you got my message. ;-)

If I had an employee presumptuous enough to think he knew more about technology than I did and felt a need to point it out, it's unlikely they'd have a chance to "quit".

The grunts are there to know the tech and to do the investigations and work. If they don't know more than the manager about the piece of the project they are working on, they really shouldn't be there. Either they are being too heavily micromanaged, or they are slacking on the job.

The problem here is that you assume you know more about the situation than the people who have done the investigation. I don't presume to know more about a piece of code than the guy who wrote it... but you seem content to armchair browbeat the people who have done more investigation into the situation than you have.

Can you explain how if this is an Apple problem, how Android and Windows Mobile data usage get reported the same way on the same network? And there is no need for the phone to report the billing. AT&T's billing system for data has never worked that way, and hasn't required that the phone report it. The meter is on their side of the network. Their CSR's who tried to answer this question are just as in dark on the tech as the end-users on this thread. Add to that hypotheses thrown out driven by unknowns and paranoia, and you get threads like this one.

 

[ijen0311]

I guess the location services news clears this up

 

[Mebsat]

Would a femtocell give the answer?

I don't have a femtocell and I haven't paid too much attention to how they work but...

Can one capture the network traffic going through the femtocell, thus getting a copy of the "cellular" packet stream? This would eliminate the need to have any sort of cellular apparatus.

Somebody could capture a few days worth and see if the phone is actually sending out data or just doing a quick handshake and report of "I used this much data today" to ATT, which gets put on the bill...

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

[Flamehearted]

Phantom Data Usage

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share something interesting I found. I was getting phantom data usage and a battery drain of about 2% per hour on standby.

I have managed to get rid of this problem by stopping the phone from sending diagnostic information to Apple. To do this you have to plug the phone into itunes, right click on the phone and then choose "reset warnings".

When you connect the phone to iTunes again it will eventually ask you again if you want to share diagnostic information with Apple. This time I chose never.

As I say no phantom usage and my battery is excellent (all day only down 5% with light usage). Gods know what I have been sending to Apple and how often but quite honestly I can live without it.

 

[Sherifftruman]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share something interesting I found. I was getting phantom data usage and a battery drain of about 2% per hour on standby.

I have managed to get rid of this problem by stopping the phone from sending diagnostic information to Apple. To do this you have to plug the phone into itunes, right click on the phone and then choose "reset warnings".

When you connect the phone to iTunes again it will eventually ask you again if you want to share diagnostic information with Apple. This time I chose never.

As I say no phantom usage and my battery is excellent (all day only down 5% with light usage). Gods know what I have been sending to Apple and how often but quite honestly I can live without it.

That could well be a cause too. I know that my 3G had phantom data all day long as well as horribile horrible battery life. I took it into the Apple store for dust under the screen and bad batter a couple of weeks before my Applecare was up.

The guy checked it out and he said the battery was actually fine, that he could see I had lots of apps crashing. (which I had quite a few, though I didn't think it was really that bad as I had gradually gotten used to it. At the same time, I also had some really long sync times - like 3 hours sometimes.

He did end up giving me a "new" phone as the dust was too much to clean he said. I restored it and had the same crappy battery life as the old phone as well as long sync. So, I am assuming that there was quite a bit of data being sent back.

Makes me more glad every day I just started over with the iPhone4 and did not do a restore.

 

[Allyeon]

Interesting to note...

My wife and I are on the Family plan. I have a 3gs and she has a 3g. I have 4.01, she has pre-4OS. We were considering going to the new data plans. I checked my usage, which for sure is higher than my wife's...and had about 158MB for the last bill. She had 1800MB. We were shocked. Looking through that bill, we noticed very odd things. A) Our phones dialed out at the same time about 1:45am on seemingly random days. B) I plug my phone into the computer, she generally uses the wall plug. C) I have insomnia, so I'm often up using mine in the 1:45 range...yet ours both sent out this data packet at the same time on the same dates. D) As I mentioned previously, I use mine a lot more, push a lot more mail through, surf more, upload more, etc...yet where I was getting amounts like 485kb, she was getting 285,000kb, in one outgoing data transfer. To me this makes no sense and does not accurately reflect our data use, but then I spotted in this thread someone mention that pre OS 4 there may be issues where the phone stays on 3G, even when wi-fi is available. This seems most logical. Even though she should be on wi-fi here at the house, most every day, she is racking up these large amounts. All this came about because her phone stopped charging and we're out of the warranty period, so we are just going to drop her data and get a non-iphone for her. She rarely uses it, so again the data use was crazy inaccurate. We are on unlimited, so not going to fuss about it to AT&T, but you can bet I'll be staying on unlimited until they do away with it or this issue is nailed down a little more solidly, because with the new plans, she would have been paying out the nose for overage and not even realize it.

So my vote is more with the OS making the difference than it simply dialing home to update AT&T on the actual data usage. Or I should say that I'm sure it is dialing home to AT&T, but I believe the OS is the cause of some very surprised folks out there who think they use 3G very little, but come to find out the phone isn't using wifi as it should. I'd suggest definitely update your OS.

 

[nitroman28]

Usage

I ran Firewall IP on my phone and the connection using the data is configuration.apple.com. I told the phone when i got it not to sending data back to apple but i guess it does it anyways.

 

[emuneee]

I don't have a femtocell and I haven't paid too much attention to how they work but...

Can one capture the network traffic going through the femtocell, thus getting a copy of the "cellular" packet stream? This would eliminate the need to have any sort of cellular apparatus.

Somebody could capture a few days worth and see if the phone is actually sending out data or just doing a quick handshake and report of "I used this much data today" to ATT, which gets put on the bill...

Curiouser and curiouser.

I'm pretty sure the cellular traffic is encrypted, from the handset to AT&Ts network.

 

[Krevnik]

I ran Firewall IP on my phone and the connection using the data is configuration.apple.com. I told the phone when i got it not to sending data back to apple but i guess it does it anyways.

Macintouch has a good discussion on what this server does here: http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/security/topic4414.html

Looks like Safari, Mail and so on use it when you have .Mac setup. Is that the case with you?

 

[MiniMarc]

Im on Vodafone in the UK and just went through my bill. Seems my 3Gs is going on the net at midnight nearly every night. Customer support told me to reset the WAP username and password to nothing so it cant work but then every time i do want to use it i have to input them myself. Not really the solution i was looking for

 

[Ebnat101]

billed data = 10x phone's usage

AT&T says I've used 517 Mb in the past week, even though my 3Gs-OS4 (not JB) says I've only used 45 Mb (settings -> general -> usage), and even though the past three months since I got this phone, both AT&T and my phone agreed I'd used 485 Mb total. I haven't changed my usage or apps, and have no idea where this phantom usage is coming from.

Turning off "cellular data" seems to stop the tide, but as soon as I turn it on, AT&T's myWireless app shows them billing me 1 Mb or so every few minutes, even though I'm on WiFi and no apps are running besides myWireless (not even in the multitasked background). All notifications and everything else I can think of is turned off. Cust svc was useless, refused to consider they're billing me for data I've not used. AT&T store manager acknowledged huge discrepancy between phone's setting's usage tally and AT&T's billing, but could only offer implausible explanation of unidentifiable apps using data without any way for me to know. He did give me a $30 credit for 2x $15/200 Mb overage charge.

Have I been hacked? Is this a virus? Who do I complain to the FCC about? AT&T? Apple? Unkown hackers?

 

[SidewaysTakumi]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Did you read the thread?

 

[lullu]

iphone downloading data on it's own

i was on the phone to ATT today for a long time and they are going to submit an investigation. Then I found ALL these postings. There are thousands of iphone users having this problem and not just here in the US and not just with ATT. My phone had received 1.4GB of data overnight.