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Mysterious data transfers on my iPhone

D

derek4484

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 29, 2010
364
153
I have an iPhone 2G. Have had it almost since it first came out. And I have always noticed on my bill that at weird times in the middle of the night there are these data transfers taking place. They occur at like 2:30AM, 2:23AM, 3:30AM, etc. so I know its not me doing anything because I'm always in bed sleeping at this time of the night/early morning. I have always wondered whats going on but never cared much about it, but now that AT&T is going to capped data plans I'd like to know what these data transfers are because they are decent amounts of data, like 5.7MB, 7.4MB, 2.8MB, etc. If AT&T is going to cap my data usage then I'd like to know how to make these transfers stop or get it deducted from my usage. I suspect its some kind of error/data reporting going back to Apple, but not sure. Anybody else know what these are?

Thanks!
 
i just noticed the same thing on my bill! My fiancees phone does it but mine doesnt. I dont really know whats going on.
 
iPhone3GCrazed said:
Maybe you're receiving e-mails? I have no clue. LOL :confused:
Click to expand...

Cant be that she doesnt have push or fetch setup on hers. I get emails randomly in the middle of the night but mine doesnt come up with these huge data transfers. It always right around 2:18am its really strange.
 
I had the same thought yesterday, so I checked my AT&T bill and found weird data transfers every night around 2am. Many were large, but one was 257MB! I called AT&T, and they couldn't help. They said they don't have to ability to see what the data is. They also said that it could be the iPhone updating itself, or some app doing its own update (at which point I knew I was talking to someone who had no clue.) Anyway, my question is, could these transfers just be an aggregate of much the data you used during the day? Because I noticed that there really are only 2 or 3 data transfers per day, and that just doesn't seem possible. I know I use my iPhone to check weather/email/news many times per day.
 
Steve jobs in a recent interview *sorry this is going to be very vague i dont have all the info in front of me* but basically a add company puts its researching software into apps to generate additional revenue for the app makers but at the same time the app will send data from your phone to them. geo locations what firmware and model iphone you use.. ect... Jobs Was very ticked off about this in the All things digital interview and said its basically a invasion of privacy because they never even asked when the app was installed that it would do those things and what data it would send... because he was rather pissed that some how media outlets were saying well look at this iphone, ipad, or other device sending info maybe apple is working on this or that. which infuriated him from the way he was talking in the interview of how data mining without asking and what data is being sent even affected his company.
 
ive noticed this aswel, just posted a thread on the o2 forums but had no response.

anthdci said:
I have just been looking at my recent iPhone data usage out of interest.
one think I have noticed is every day at midnight, my phone sends/receives a chunk of data and I have no idea what it is for.
For example, two random pages from my bill.

23 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 6228 0.000
24 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 3339 0.000
25 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 5674 0.000
26 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 2845 0.000
27 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 2600 0.000
28 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 4233 0.000
29 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 10366 0.000
30 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 2721 0.000
31 Mar 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 5010 0.000
01 Apr 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 10302 0.000
02 Apr 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 4380 0.000
03 Apr 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 3165 0.000

27 Jan 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 10844 0.000
28 Jan 10 00:00:01 idata.o2.co.uk 2590 0.000
29 Jan 10 00:00:01 idata.o2.co.uk 4455 0.000
30 Jan 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 1438 0.000
31 Jan 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 3545 0.000
01 Feb 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 3589 0.000
02 Feb 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 6281 0.000
03 Feb 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 2851 0.000
04 Feb 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 4580 0.000
05 Feb 10 00:00:00 idata.o2.co.uk 3343 0.000
(4th column is amount of data in KB)

This seems to be using the vast majority of a my data usage, which is on average 200mb per month, they average about 3-4mb each night, so times that by 30 days and its between 90 and 100mb.

What is it?
Click to expand...
 
I hope all this gets straighted out. If those greedy bastards are charging $15 for 200 f'n MBs, then they better explain these mysterious 3 or 4 MB daily transfers.
 
I reset the data counter on my 3G yesterday morning. At the end of the day I had 2.2 MB of usage. This morning I checked it and it's at 10.8 MB of usage.

I was considering getting my wife an iPhone with the new 200 MB plan because she doesn't need a bunch of data...but if the phone's going to transfer 8 MB every night, that will exceed the 200 MB every month.

Kinda screwy.
 
I am also getting a mysterious data transfer every night - usually around 2:30 AM. Some of them are huge! And my iPhone should have wifi available, so why is it using data at all??
 
wacky4alanis said:
I am also getting a mysterious data transfer every night - usually around 2:30 AM. Some of them are huge! And my iPhone should have wifi available, so why is it using data at all??
Click to expand...

The iPhone switches to 3G or edge while sleeping. This is why there are data charges during that time. You will have to turn on airplane mode or turn the phone off at night to avoid using data.
 
Doesn't Mobile Safari update its phishing/malicious sites list at night? Wouldn't have thought its much but its something...

Could also be push notification service ... maybe if it establishes the connection on cell data it continues to do so..
 
This is interesting. I was just looking at my bill over the weekend and noticed the same thing 2:30 am data usage. Like others have noted, some transfers are pretty large (200Meg+). My total usage last month was 1.5gig - all months prior were 500m or less though. I thought maybe it had to do with some sort of end of day reconciliation ATT was doing.
 
hexonxonx said:
The iPhone switches to 3G or edge while sleeping. This is why there are data charges during that time. You will have to turn on airplane mode or turn the phone off at night to avoid using data.
Click to expand...

This is going to be really annoying for people who want to use the 200MB plan, then. And it sounds like a bug. There's no reason why it shouldn't keep using your wifi while asleep.

Anybody know of a jailbroken app that will disable your 3G upon sleep? I could see this getting annoying fast.
 
Cougarcat said:
This is going to be really annoying for people who want to use the 200MB plan, then. And it sounds like a bug. There's no reason why it shouldn't keep using your wifi while asleep.

Anybody know of a jailbroken app that will disable your 3G upon sleep? I could see this getting annoying fast.
Click to expand...

If it is a bug, it's existed since the original iPhone.

Because this happens, there has been an add on to SBSettings in Cydia that forces the iPhone to stay on WiFi while it is sleeping. I think it is called keep awake.
 
hexonxonx said:
If it is a bug, it's existed since the original iPhone.

Because this happens, there has been an add on to SBSettings in Cydia that forces the iPhone to stay on WiFi while it is sleeping. I think it is called keep awake.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind if I run into data usage problems.

Perhaps it's a battery life issue? Wifi doesn't use a lot more battery than 3G, does it?
 
anthdci said:
ive noticed this aswel, just posted a thread on the o2 forums but had no response.
Click to expand...

I can't say this for everyone, but if those are the only charges you're seeing for that day, it just happens that that particular hour is when o2 decides to bill your daily data usage.
 
Jeffrosproto said:
I can't say this for everyone, but if those are the only charges you're seeing for that day, it just happens that that particular hour is when o2 decides to bill your daily data usage.
Click to expand...

I have removed all my other details from my bill leaving only the relevant ones.
 
hexonxonx said:
If it is a bug, it's existed since the original iPhone.

Because this happens, there has been an add on to SBSettings in Cydia that forces the iPhone to stay on WiFi while it is sleeping. I think it is called keep awake.
Click to expand...

If it's a bug, then why doesn't all phones exhibit the same 2:30am data dump?

I think it has to do with one of the apps. I'm going to run a test on my wife's phone. Her's does the nightly data xfer and mine does not. I'm going to remove 5 apps a day that she has but I don't to see if the downloading quits. (If it's not those 5, I'll reinstall them. I'm not that mean.) Should I find a group of 5, I'll narrow it down until I pinpoint the 1.

Or maybe I'll just call Apple.
 
remcentre said:
If it's a bug, then why doesn't all phones exhibit the same 2:30am data dump?

I think it has to do with one of the apps. I'm going to run a test on my wife's phone. Her's does the nightly data xfer and mine does not. I'm going to remove 5 apps a day that she has but I don't to see if the downloading quits. (If it's not those 5, I'll reinstall them. I'm not that mean.) Should I find a group of 5, I'll narrow it down until I pinpoint the 1.

Or maybe I'll just call Apple.
Click to expand...

The data transfers isn't the bug we were talking about. We were talking about how the phone switches to 3G or edge when it sleeps.
 
Apple says...

hexonxonx said:
The data transfers isn't the bug we were talking about. We were talking about how the phone switches to 3G or edge when it sleeps.
Click to expand...

Ok, sorry. My mistake.

I called Apple. The rep said there should be no automatic data uploading at night. I told him I updated the phone software last week but he said that, by what he could see, the phone software was out of date (which is odd since I updated both phones at the same time).

The Apple rep said to try the update again. If that doesn't work. He said a restore should be performed.

We'll see how that works when I get home this evening.
 
Ive had a response on the o2 forum, it turns out data is billed the same way as texts and calls. It is collated and sent to the billing server. Having looked closer at mine, there are 2 entries per day, one between 9.30pm and 11.30pm and the other at midnight so these are obviously the times the data usage is synced with o2s billing server.

I guess you guys on att have yours done at 2.30.
 
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