iPhone excessive data usage

[gwensee]

Dec 6 my account is showing data usage of 3113 MB - this is totally unusual for my account - is it possible this is an error in data usage tracking on Public Mobile part or is there something wrong that my phone used excessive data for that day?

[Shutdown]

Probably wifi assist. It's an iphone feature that uses data without you knowing when your on wifi. Very doubtful it's a problem with PM data usage tracking, otherwise there would be wide spread complaint about it. It's extremely likely it's just your phone fault.

[CalgaryBen]

@gwensee if you log into your self-serve portal, then from the Overview page, click on "View My Usage" under your plan status frame (or click on Plan and Add-Ons and then Usage History), do you see data usage (Call Type "Web") under a single big chunk, or spread out? Also note the date/time (which, by the way, is in EST, regardless of your location). This might give some clues as to when data was consumed, and perhaps you can correlate to something you were doing?

Also, in your iPhone if you go under Settings --> Cellular, you can scroll down to the "Cellular Data" section and see how much data was used in the current period (it's a good habit to try and reset this for each billing cycle, although I'll admit it's easy to forget and there's no way to automate/schedule this AFAIK). The apps using cellular data are ranked in order of highest data consumer, so maybe you'll find the offender in there and can disable cellular data or otherwise tweak it or your usage of it.

[RobertQc]

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@gwensee wrote:

Dec 6 my account is showing data usage of 3113 MB - this is totally unusual for my account - is it possible this is an error in data usage tracking on Public Mobile part or is there something wrong that my phone used excessive data for that day?

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@gwensee

Netflix uses 1gb per hour and if you put it in HD it uses 1gb in 20 minutes. 1 map update can use up your entire data plan. In terms of “content” 3GB is very little these days. Where my internet is unlimited, I average around 3000gb monthly and I don't try to waste any data.

But its best to ask your phone. Go into settings and data usage and look at what app(s) were using it.  

Just because "you" are sleeping, doesn't mean your phone is.  Maybe your map was updating. Maybe your pictures were being backed up to the cloud, OS updates, etc or some other app (even if you don't use it, or even know that its installed). Maybe it was a malicious app stealing your identity. One of the major problems is Wi-Fi assist, or thinking you are on Wi-fi but the signal is poor to it switches to cellular without you knowing.

I don’t mean this to be rude but take responsibility for your phone or accept that it will do anything it wants without you giving it permission while you are sleeping. Maybe one day it will use 5000mb the next day it will use 0. Many things that use data on the phone are not regularly scheduled. Get a firewall. Set data warnings, disable background data for apps that you don't want to access. Uninstall apps that you don't use. Disable auto-updates, etc

[wetcoaster]

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@gwensee wrote:

Dec 6 my account is showing data usage of 3113 MB - this is totally unusual for my account - is it possible this is an error in data usage tracking on Public Mobile part or is there something wrong that my phone used excessive data for that day?

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Not enough information...

If you are seeing this amount in your overview page / data usage page it's the total used for your current billing cycle. If you are seeing it in your usage history its for approximately 12 hours (the usage history is not real time, accumulated amounts are reported twice a day).

The PM data tracker is accurate and what counts. Did your iphone an OS update over data, is WiFi assist on, apps that use data in the background? Auto download of videos on Facebook etc?

Another option, however, my understanding is that that bug has been fixed: When is your plan renewal date? How much data did you use last cycle? (there was a bug a while back that some users' 3G plans the data counter didn't reset properly on renewal...)