Using mobile data even when connected only to home wifi

[danielv]

I just switched to PM yesterday and have not left my home wifi.  My Samsung A5 says I am connected to my home network but I have still used 65MB of mobile data on my account.  Considering I have pretty much only checked email on my phone, briefly clicked on a single web page link, and thought I was using my home wifi, my 1gb will not make it through 30 days at this rate.

[srlawren]

@danielv FYI the usage history page only updates your data usage every 12 hours or so.  If you did your tests today, have a look again tomorrow and you should see them reflected in the history.  On the other hand, the overview page that shows my data and add-ons usage total is updated in real-time (or near real-time), which is why you are seeing the deduction from your bucket there already.

[danielv]

First of all, thanks to all who replied to my concern.  It's so good to find a forum like this with knowlegable and sincere help.  I checked all the settings, developer options was especially interesting, but found them all to be off or on as required.  I did purposely activate Waze for a a few km just to see how the stats would change.  OK.  My high level of concern is not warranted -- with a caveat.  Checking data usage on the phone itself, it turns out, is not productive.  My phone labels all web calls as "mobile data."  To really find my plan data usage I should have checked 'my account' on the PM site.  Here I find two conflicting values: 

Rading 'overview' and 'data usage' I've consumed 7+ mb reducing my total available to 1016 mb.  The usage history tab, though it does list 4 web calls, totals each to 0. I imagine my paranoia does not but does this data make sense to anyone?  

[koimr1]

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@danielv wrote:

I just switched to PM yesterday and have not left my home wifi.  My Samsung A5 says I am connected to my home network but I have still used 65MB of mobile data on my account.  Considering I have pretty much only checked email on my phone, briefly clicked on a single web page link, and thought I was using my home wifi, my 1gb will not make it through 30 days at this rate.

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By any chance has your A5 updated itself (would've been recently, like within the last week) to Android 8.0/Oreo?

If so, check "Developer Options" in your phone settings (might not be visible - google to enable) and make sure "Mobile Data Always Active" is turned off. For some reason Google defaults this to be on now instead of off as it was in the past.

Android Oreo bug: Phones using mobile data even when Wi-Fi is available

[FYI] For some, mobile data is now set to "always active" by default in Android Oreo

If your phone is not on Oreo still check that above setting anyway. If it is off then not sure what else it could be.

An app like My Data Manager will show you which apps are using what kind of data but you might also be able to get this from your phone's settings too.

I do agree with @will13am and @srlawren that this is more than likely a phone issue and not a Public Mobile one. Ultimately if you can't find the cause then you can turn mobile data off entirely while at home and track and see if there's any more usage.

[srlawren]

@danielv a couple of things to check:  "Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep", set that to "Always".  Also, if you phone has a Wi-Fi Assist or Smart Wi-Fi Switch type features in the Wi-Fi settings, turn that off as well.

If all that checks out, then you may want to check out how to identify what apps are using your data on an Android phone.

[will13am]

@danielv, this is likely a phone thing and nothing to do with this service.  On android, once the wifi connection is established, the mobile network state switches to disconnected.  It could be that from time to time your wifi connection is being dropped/hibernated which brings the mobile network state back to life.  Check to see if there is a power saving option for wifi when the phone is sleeping.