iPhone/AT&T cellular data usage - something is wrong here

[aphex]

We have four iPhones with AT&T on a 10gb/mo family share plan. We normally use 4-6gb/mo combined for all 4 phones, with myself the heaviest user at 2-3gb/mo.

Well the 3rd day into this month's billing cycle (starts on the 11th), we get a notification that 65% of the data has already been used for the month. We check online and see that my wife's phone has apparently sent 7gb of data in a single night, no idea why.

We call AT&T, they can't tell us what was actually using the data, but give us an extra 2gb after speaking with a rep. We've been turning off the cellular data 95% of the day now, only turning it on when needing to check e-mail quickly, or look something up.

Fast forward to today, we get the notification that 100% is now used up. I check online, and now my phone seems to be doing it, saying that i used almost 3gb of data (what i normally use in a month), in less than a week.

What's odd is that when i check the usage on the AT&T website, it says my phone is sending data in almost exactly the same size 20mb increments for a 10-15 minute period, 250+ mb each time it does it. Sometimes it shows 40mb (two of the 20mb batches) in less than a minute, which i don't even think is possible given the LTE speed.

WTF is going on here? We have wifi at home, routers are working fine. Issue seems to be effecting both our phones. I have no idea if an app is doing it, but AT&T can't tell me what its actually doing.

 

[aphex]

Ok, so i'm not sure how accurate this is; but my wife's iPhone data counter (which has never been reset) shows that the phone has received 4.5gb of data and sent 345mb total since we got it. Her phone was replaced in January, so thats from 5.5 months of usage.

AT&T's website shows she sent 7gb this month alone.

 

[Oyeve]

icloud service on her phone? Maybe it kicked in and is copying data from the cloud to the replacement phone.

 

[Qbah]

I was getting the same thing, even before iCloud. I don't remember what I did to solve it - I think it was the reports that are sent for stuff that crashes? Right click in iTunes on the iPhone and select "Reset warnings". There's also a setting in the iPhone to stop collecting this: General -> About -> Diagnostics&Usage -> Don't send.

Identical thing - I could see the usage reported on my provider's website, very constant data packages sent at specific hours for crazy amounts. And the usage was not reported in Settings -> Usage -> Cellular usage. There is another thread or two here on ATF and numerous reports on the web. The issue was never acknowledged, as far as I can tell.

 

[vshah]

this happened to me once while I was trying to email a large number of pictures from a 4S. The email sat in the outbox the entire night and never sent, but was uploading data throughout the night. after I deleted the email from the outbox, the data usage stopped.

 

[dfuze]

Something similar happened to me about a week ago. Woke up and for first time in ages checked my data app (Data Usage) and it says I used 1.6gb overnight. My phone is covered by wifi at home so that didn't make any sense. Checking the AT&T website didn't show it was used at all but the whole thing was confusing none the less. Hope you manage to figure it all out.