Help! I got bite by a huge data bill

[rickhorn]

Hi guys, I am so pissed off by my last month's bill cuz there are $30 charged for excessive data flow. I found most of the data occurred by "mobile browser" and some of their connection time are over 2000 mins which is impossible!

I am using wifi at home and school but some programs (e.g. safari) are sending and receiving data in the dark background thru cellular data while I'm ON WIFI. WTF!!!

Today I cleared all the usage and opened safari while I'm at home on WIFI. Somehow there were 0.7M appeared as usage on Cellular DATA!!! WHY??? Can anyone tell me WHY some ******* programs tend to send data packets thru cellular network other than thru darn WIFI network???!!!

Now I want to disable all background multitasking but I CANT!!!!!!

I am so frustrated by iPhone and iOS 4 now!!! Is it just me? or it's some cheesy settings that I need to be aware of???

Can anyone help? Thanks.

 

[apunkrockmonk]

I'd imagine the 0.7m is probably because after your phone is asleep for a minute or two wifi turns off.

Any push notifications received while the phone's screen has been off for more than a couple minutes would use (relatively little) 3G data.

That's my best guess at least.

 

[Ashin]

Settings>Store>Sign out

This causes 1 carrier connection that keeps sending data to disconnect

 

[-aggie-]

You need to tell us what your settings are? Push on? Stuff like that.

 

[wordoflife]

Well the only thing I can think of at the moment is
settings > general > network > disable cellular data

Not sure who your carrier is, but call them ask what they can do about it.
I somehow accidentally called an international number on my phone, but called AT&T, explained that we didn't do it (or unaware that we did it), and then removed those charges

 

[xAnthony]

The thread title is really misleading. I was expecting to see (And feel sorry for) someone with a $500+ data over-usage bill.

$30 is nothing, and really it's not something you should be seriously concerned about. Just start to watch your usage and be a little more careful. Perhaps you were surfing (or watching videos) while you were on 3G and you just didn't notice it. These things do happen, and I've experienced it several times.

What's your data limit anyways? If you don't have a data plan, and you have 3G on... Well that's just silly.

 

[Givmeabrek]

$30 overage?

You're concerned about .7Mb data usage? What data plan do you have? It's not adding up. You have a smartphone which uses data for everything!

 

[wordoflife]

Wow, $30. That's what most people pay every month for data. How can you complain??

I think he said hes paying overage charges of $30, not just $30 for data.

 

[rickhorn]

OK, thanks guys for replying with solutions!

Just clear the situation a bit:

1. I have $50 for 250 mins day and unlimited starting from 6 PM and wknd.
2. Unlimited txt n multimedia txt; caller ID; display; voicemail
3. 10 national buddy numbers for free
4. 500M data/month

-------separation line------------

Last month's bill, there is a $30+ overchage on data. I checked the bills, the most of the excessive amount of data was used by "mobile browser". One of the session even lasted for 2000+ minutes for 400M data. (OMG). As far as I know, I didn't download that much, I normally use iPhone 4 for news and stocks...

-------separation line-----------

I had push notification ON, location service ON...I'd assume that once the iphone 4 sleeps, it automatically cuts off WIFI connection to reserve battery. However, some "evil" apps (like Safari maybe?) continue downloading a lot of sh****t at the dark backstage (without my consent or awareness).

-------separate line--------------

The carrier is Virgin Mobile Canada, which rents Bell Canada's HSPA+ network. So now the temp solution is to close cellular data, ban notification and location service. Even I shut down the cellular data, something still sent 0.4k over the network while I'm on WIFI, just in front of my eyes...

Anyone also suffers from this???