Excessive & unexplained pre-paid data usage

My prepaid mobile broadband which I use on my home computer -After re-charging with the new deal - 16GB for 730 days - all I have left now is 5.99GB - after only 2 months!!There is no obvious reason for this, I now spend minimal time online, checking emails, internet banking, check Fb & that's it. I don't download music or movies, to afraid to watch any Youtube. Once/twice a week I make calls via Skype - max time 15mins.I have password protection on my modem, I have set my windows downloading/installing to manual. I have set my antivirus protection to "economy" - which was recommended to save chewing thru my data usage. I now wonder what's next to do???? Up until 6 months ago, this problem did not exist - I was able to complete 18mths of study, using the internet daily & doing massive research, downloading etc, then all has gone pearshaped!!! If anyone can provide advice - it would be much appreciated, thank you.

I have had exactly the same problem. Logged in on sunday to check emails and it took 1959Mb of my data and shut down my account. Reported it, still waiting. Went in to my local Telstra store and they phoned help (overseas) for me. They did not even have my current address so I could verify who I was. Afet half an hour I eventually got put back to an operator who asked me if I wanted to pay my account that was paid a week ago. If there were awards for disgusting customer service nobody would come near Telstra. In 2015 I have been without internet for 2 days now.

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Suggestion: Offer Pre-Paid Data usage that doesn't expire!

I'm paying the extra $150 for the 3G version because sometimes I want to use it when I'm out and about. But 90% of the time I'll be in a wifi area. So I don't want to pay a monthly fee for that.
I'd rather buy 250mb of data so I can budget it sparingly across a number of months.

When you think of it, no one offers a plan Like Apollo_13 describes. Your cable TV provider doesn't care if your TV was off all month. You'll still pay the 95 bucks. Your phone company doesn't care if your phone was off all month either. You must still pay the full contract cost. No Internet service provider charges by data usage. The rates are fixed and only vary by the speed of the connection you buy. Doesn't matter if you don't go online all month. I think it helps keep the cost down, actually. If we paid by amounts used, then the costs wouldn't be spread out as much and it would end up actually costing more on a per megabyte basis. You might save some money on a low usage month, but use it a lot and you'd be paying a lot more than the fixed rates currently applicable.

Mysterious "BigPond Content" charges on iPad pre-paid data service

Every Sunday, at approximately the same time (17:30 or thereabouts) a mysterious BigPond Content charge of $9.95 appears in the Messages tab of the data usage area on the 24x7 app for that service. Does anyone have any idea what these might be for? The device is used by one of my family and has a minimum number of apps installed on it. This is burning up credit and hence the amount of available data.
Many thanks.

This sounds as though the service may have been used to sign up to a 'premium' service which bills directly to your account.
I would suggest jumping onto Live Chat and asking them for the service that is generating the charge, and then you can work towards having that subscription cancelled.
https://livechat.telstra.com/TCOM:Crowdsupport:Consumer

I am trying to download the new episode of Game of Thrones on my iPad. We are currently travelling in Italy and have an unlimited pre- paid data plan with the Italian carrier Wind. When I try download the episode through iTunes I get an error message

Hi there, traveling through Italy with my iPad. Purchased a unlimited prepaid data plan with Italian carrier WIND. Has been working excellent, but when I try to download a new episode of Game of Thrones, I get an error message which says that I have to connect to a wi fi network or download the episode on my MacBook. Why can't I download using the microsim and prepaid data plan? Any help will be great thank you!

Unfortunately downloads larger than 20mbps require wifi due to most carriers having data limits. This "requirement" keeps people who are not familiar with data and what takes up a lot of data from going over.

Ipad 2 per paid data sim - Greece

Hi All,
Wife is booking a holiday to greece and I want to take my ipad with me.
Obviously I dont wanna pay roaming charges on the sim i use in the UK.
Does anyone know if you can get a pre paid data sim in greece for ipad 2?
If so, how do i get it and how much will it cost, network .... etc
Instructions also would be very much appreciated.
Many Thanks

I am experiencing a simular issue.
I have the Ipad with retina display. I had 4G working and then decided to change my credit card info (to a different charge card) on the ipad. As soon as I changed my credit card the 4G stopped working. I've done the network settings reset and that didn't fix it. I worked with customer support for over an hour today and they couldn't fix it, they said we need to replace the SIM card but I don't think they are right as it stopped working the second i changed my credit card #. Of course AT&T was successful in charging my new credit card... just not providing internet service...

Excess data usage on my from my with pre-paid 3G Wi Fi

I am tearing my hair out with an excess data issue; I hope someone can help me out. I'm using a 3G WiFi on my laptop and over the last week and a half, my data usage has been very high, as have my total hours for a 24-hour period. I've been taking detailed notes about my log on and log off times as well as the data used during the time I'm logged on and since June 26 and I've discovered that I am being charged for time and data even while I am not online. I've now spoken to four different people on the phone at Telstra about this issue. The first two times, I was compensated for this: once with extra credit, the other with extra data; these are a good help for the problem that has happened, but moving forward it doesn't fix the problem of being charged for time and data that I haven't used. And continuously being overcharged makes me cross. Has anyone experienced something similar? I've been on this pre-paid broadband since March and everything had been great - $50 managed to last me the whole month, even as a student, being online most of the day, but from June 22 it started chewing up my data without explanation--I'm on semester break and am not online much at all, so I don't understand. Here's an example:July 1: logged off at 11:12pm - data usage was 180MB - total hours was 8:08:00 (which was already 3 hours more than I had actually been on for the day).July 2: logged on and checked the previous day's data and hours - data usage was 491MB - total hours was 12:02:37! How does this happen? The WiFi was not connected to my laptop (I manually connect and have automatic WiFI connection turned off), my laptop was shut down, and I was asleep! How did the connection manage to use and extra 300MB data over an additional 4 hours? Has something changed? I need to fix this. I've put a complaint into the ombudsman about it.

Hey Sirdal,
I understand that your pre-paid Wi-Fi 4G service seems to be using up a lot of your data allowance from the time that you recharge your in the last 2 recharges.
This is definitely worth investigating but please also bear in mind that the rates of your data iis dependent on the previous data plan you've recharged on.
So if you've changed from a $20 recharge to $30 recharge, you need to disconnect from the internet before reconnecting in order to reset the rate of your data charge to what is equivalent for the $30 recharge because if you've not refreshed your connection since the $20 recharge, you will be charged the same rate as if you were on the $20 rechage rather than the $30 recharge which means that your allowance will be used up more than what it should be. I hope this makes sense Sirdal.

Since last software update, pre-paid internet does not work anymore. Get "you have not signed up for a data plan" message. Pre-paid acct is in order! What's up???

I have had an iPad 3G for more than a year now. I did not get it with a SIM card, since I expected to use almost completely at home, where we have wireless internet. Eventually, I decided it would be handy to be able to take it on the road, and signed up for pre-paid Internet with KPN (national Dutch telecommunications company). That worked fine, until the last big iPad software update. Since then, whenever I try to make a connection outside the house, I get the following message…
Mobile Data Account
You have not signed up for a data plan.
Would you like to set up a new account?
If you don’t, you can do it later in Settings.
…with the options of ‘Later’ or ‘Now’ to press. If I press Now, I get a screen “Please wait while the page is loading – this should only take a few seconds to complete.” But it never does, the ball just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning….
To my mind, with pre-paid internet I should not HAVE to set up a Mobile Data Account in the first place. I’ve checked with KPN, and my account is completely in order. I’ve checked with the local Apple store, and the geniuses say they’ve never seen this. Can anyone help me?

I updated to 3.6.4 and when I went to NetFlix to watch the next show of a series, it said
something like
Installation complete, restart your browser.
I restarted browser, same problem. Restarted comp. Same problem.
I updated Adobe Flash 10.1, still same problem.
But able to watch some vids on other sites, but full screen gave me the big blank white screen with audio only, had to click around in the dark ( so to speak) to find the minimize button.
I did a System Restore to before the Firefox and Adobe updates.
I then did not update Firefox as recommended and went to NetFlix and wellah, i can view the movies again.
And Full Screen is fine.
I then experimented and updated Firefox only, went to NetFlix and got same msg with no viewable shows.
So did a System Restore once more.
Staying at 3.6.3 for a while longer until I know I can watch my movies.
I don't own a TV, so this is my only form of an occasional escape.
I do hope this is figured out soon.
With what I have done, it seems to be Firefox, Not Flash.
Good Luck to us all.

How can I reduce excessive data usage?

My wife and I recently moved to the country and have no internet available by a physical cable or wire from an ISP. Our internet service is provided through a Verizon Jetpack that we lease from Verizon. We have an iPhone 4s, iPhone 5s, an iPad 1, and an iPad 2 (both iPads are WiFi only)
Our problem is excessive data usage. Prior to our move, our iPhones each used approx .2GB per month. 16 days into our current billing month, the iPhones have each used approx 1.2GB, but our Jetpack (which creates our home WiFi for our iPads) has already used 10GB. We do not stream anything on our iPads. We use them in the evening for surfing the internet, checking Facebook, and playing Words With Friends. That's about it. The Verizon online data calculator indicates we shoud be using about 4GB per month based on our iPad usage. Yet my data usage log says that one night this week between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM, our Jetpack used a full 1GB. Is it possible that our Jetpack is simply "burning up" GBs while we sleep?

On my iPhone 4 running iOS 6, Settings > General > Usage quotes the installed size of the apps not the data usage. I've just installed the Onavo Count which claims to record data usage of each app so one can see which the greedy ones are.

I have an IPhone 4 that I just activated yesterday with a pre paid plan, but data doesn't work

I activated the phone yesterday. The wifi works but the 3g data does not. I have between 3-5 bars of strength but the phone will not connect to the internet. I had a virgin mobile pre paid phone that did not give me any trouble. Please help. I have done a hard reset, I have reset the network settings, as well. Neither have worked. I have also turned the airport mode on and off, that did not work.

Sounds like your phone is in recovery mode. In this case, all data on it is gone. There's nothing to back up.

IPhone 5 - Excessive data usage and data "bleed"

We recently upgraded my daughter's phone from a Samsung to an iPhone 5, originally running iOS 6, now running iOS 7. The Samsung (Android) phone used less than .5 MB per month, whereas the iPhone 5 will consume that much data in one day. About 80% of the phone's usage is on WiFi, and is only actively used on the cellular network less than an hour a day. However, the phone and the Verizon data usage log show data being consumed even when connected continously to wifi.
With help from a Verizon representative, we turned off location services, closed all background apps and stopped automatic updates and refreshes, shut off icloud, email, and anything else that could possibly be running in the background or consuming data. The changes didn't do anything to slow the usage, and the Verizon reps suggested that my daughter was secretly using her phone in the middle of the night to play games and watch movies. At Verizon's recommendation, we signed up for parental controls, and set them to prevent the phone from being used during the school day, and at night. However, the phone and Verizon continue to show data use in tiny increments 24 hours per day. These post in the Verizon data usage logs about every 10 minutes, and are typically 10-20KB.
Using the parental controls, I set a hard data stop each week so that we could meter her data out over a month's time and prevent overages. It is supposed to stop all data usage on the phone once she reaches a preset limit. She would usually hit the 1GB limit in a day or two, but the phone and Verizon's data usage log show that the phone continues to bleed data 24 hours per day even after the limit is reached and she is unable to use her phone. Verizon can offer no explanation.
In addition to the data bleed, the actual data usage for virtually any activity that required data is substantially higher than what I would see for the same use on my iPhone 4s. For example, a couple of youtube videos played on her iPhone 5 resulted in 0.8GB being used in just a few minutes, vs about 50MB on my 4s for the same videos. Verizon seems to suggest that this is due to the higher resolution and speed, but it seems excessive.
Here's a Youtube video I found that seems to show our exact issue. We've done similar tests on our phone, with the same results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AR2rEFcKk
Although it is frequently suggested that the "fix" for this problem is to turn off cellular, that hardly addresses the problem. It would also mean we have purchased a very expensive iPod.
Is there anyone who can help us address this issue? Verizon has been no help, and does not acknowledge this as an ongoing problem, despite the fact that there are countless articles, blogs, and videos online about the very same issue. We have tried a number of the "fix" recommendations we've found online, but thus far have had no success.

There's something wrong. Have you tried the 4 Rs basic troubleshooting steps?
Restart:
1. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the red "slide to power off" slider appears, and then slide the slider.
2. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
Reset: Hold down the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears. Note: You will not lose any data
Restore from backup
Restore as new
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414
This article is about battery life, there are a few tips about data usage as well.
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html
Data settings & usage
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4146
If all failed, make an appointment with the Apple genius at your local Apple Store and have them evaluate.

IPhone 5 excess data usage

Hi, we have purchased an iphone 5 plan with telstra for my daughter and in the first 4 days of plan, excess data of 7GB was recorded! I contacted Telstra and they have for a once time only waived the excess charges and data was turned off, no more data was used for month. This month, first day my daughter used 100 mb of 1GB of data allowance! I asked what she was doing and she accessed only afew websites to check when she was working which should be a few kb of data. Data has been turned of again. We are frightened to use internet on iphone 5.
My Samsung Galaxy 2 with Vodaphone I leave data on all the time and look at webites and use a few apps which need to be connected to data and have used in the last 10 days 18mb!
We are taking daughter's phone into telstra and will talk to them about either the phone or their system.
Is there a problem with iPhone 5 or is it Telstra.

There are numerous wifi problems with iOS 6. It's possible that your daughter's phone is switching from wifi to cellular and she is not noticing that. Still, that's a lot of data, so there might be something else going on. Search this forum for threads about excess data usage. There's a lot of info. Also, look at the threads listed to the right under "More Like This".

Unexplained Verizon Data Usage on Iphone 5s

I have data usage charges showing up on my Iphone 5s every day at 5:40am Eastern time. The problem is that my phone is not being used at that time of day and is always connected to WiFi while I am home. The data usage has been very large, from 60mb all the way up to 100mb. I see that others have posted similar concerns so I'm throwing my voice in here saying that this is not our imagination, it is happening and killing out data usage.
Here is a screen grab of my data usage. As you can see, every day at 5:40am, there is a large spike in usage. My phone is not in use at that time:
There must be an explanation and resolution for this.

Hi KingPumpkin,
We always want your charges to be accurate! Smartphones are now able to tell you what applications are using your data. Please go to cellular>use cellualr data for>and this list tells you what data was billed to your cellular data. You could screen shot this list when your done using the phone in the evening. Then compare the screenshot in the morning to see what application data has changed. Data overages can sometime be billed in delay. Your device is set to pick up the strongest signal on the device, so if the Wi-fi server is weak or reboots at 5:40am every morning, then the device will quickly switch to back the Verizon Wireless network until the Wi-fi server comes back up. You could also eliminate these charges by turning off the cellular data every night since the device is connected to Wi-fi.
Thanks,
PamelaF_VZW
Tweet us @vzwsupport

Iphone 5 excessive cellular data usage

I am a new iPhone user and I am a bit concerned for how fast my phone burns through data. I have an iPhone 5, ios 7.0.4, and my cellphone provider is Fido in Canada (May be irrelevant info). I manually turn cellular data off whenever it's not in use. At times where I use wifi (which is about 98% of the time), I never leave cellular data on at the same time. So, I have 2 issues:
1) In system services under Cellular data usage, "iTunes Accounts" seems to be the top user of data. I looked at some previous discussions on this matter and many have said that turning off iCloud would do the trick, as well as turning off 'push'. However, I have never had my iCloud account nor "iTunes and App store," logged on. I have 'updates' and 'use cellular data' turned off as well for this feature. On top of that, under "Mail, Contacts, and Calendars' I have Fetch New Data set as 'hourly' instead of "Push". So why is it that my under system services, 'iTunes Accounts" still jumps up a few hundred kb whenever I DO have cellular data turned on.
2) How much data does the Facebook App use? Lets say I turn cellular data on, then I open up the Facebook App, and I scroll down my news feed. I do not select any pictures, videos, or profiles. I then check my data usage and somehow I burned 4mb on this specific app! I understand images take up more usage but I find that a bit suspicious.
Of course, this isn't the only app that seems to be hogging data. It's just amazing how other phone users (iphones and android users) can just leave their data on without their data randomly draining.

You are welcome
Usually data consumed by system services is on the higher side.
I would suggest reseting the data counter and then checking again after few hours to know the real culprit.
To reset the counter, there's an option "Reset Statistics", just under the list we discussed before.
This way you would get to know which app is using your data righ now.

ITunes Match/iOS 7 iPhone music workaround for excessive data usage?

I just got an email from AT&T indicating I had exceeded 150GB of home data usage this month. It was because I used my home wifi to download 5000 songs to my iPhone from iTunes Match to fill it.
I'm frustrated, since it used to be so easy to make iTunes Match work for a large amount of music: In iOS 6 what I used to do (if I had to restore iPhone and set up as new phone): Plug iPhone 5 into computer, set up phone as new, check "manually manage music and videos" and "prefer 128kbps" and make sure iTunes Match was off in phone settings. Then drag & drop 5000 songs (about 40GB) from iTunes into phone. Once that was completed (a couple of hours), I could disconnect the iPhone from my Mac, turn iTunes Match to "on" in phone settings, and I'd get a message on the phone saying "All music on this device will be replaced" which is fine, but other than taking a while to update the remainder of my iCloud stored music, it used very little data.
Fast-forward to this past weekend. After updating to iOS 7.0.2 and having to do a restore and set up as new iPhone, this approach didn't work: When the step came "All music on this device will be replaced," all of the 5000 songs entirely re-downloaded all over again, which took 27 hours and burned through 40+ GB of home data (not phone data, since I was on Wifi). I kept my phone at home, plugged in and on wifi all weekend so as not to burn through all of my LTE data.
What is the deal? If I have to do this again (let's hope iOS 7.0.3 or 7.1 doesn't force my phone into recovery mode again), I certainly don't have the time or patience to let iTunes Match redownload all music again, and I certainly don't want to use up 40+ GB of home data.
Is there a workaround for this? Have others been successful transferring music via computer first and then turning on Match without problem in iOS 7.0.2? I'm sure it worked that way in iOS 6, and without completely redownloading all the music again, since that process would have taken several hours and a lot of home data, and I have not had any problems like this prior to iOS 7.

I think a better question is why do you "have to" restore your iPhone and set it up as a new device as often as you seem to? This seems to be more of a problem for you.
I followup question is why do you have iTunes Match turned on if you're syncing all your music to your iPhone?
Perhaps you should examine how you're using your iPhone and iTunes Match?
brsedu wrote:
Have others been successful transferring music via computer first and then turning on Match without problem in iOS 7.0.2? I'm sure it worked that way in iOS 6, and without completely redownloading all the music again, since that process would have taken several hours and a lot of home data, and I have not had any problems like this prior to iOS 7.
To answer this question, yes I have. It has always worked this way for me.

IPhone 5 excessive data usage problem (carrier-AT&T)--any resolutions?

I got an iPhone 5 in June of 2013, and the billing period after I got it, I went over my data usage for the first time ever (I have been an iPhone user since 2010). I thought that it was just because I had been working out at a camp that got poor reception and had been using as much as I always did. However, in the subsequent months, I have racked up data overage charges every month, and since October, it's been several gigs over my plan. I have a 4gb plan with AT&T that I share with my parents (I am a college student), and they don't use hardly any data. As I am a nineteen-year-old, I admit that I do spend a lot of time on the Internet and use a lot of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, etc.), and I have always used a lot more data than my parents, but I don't think I'm doing much more than I did when I still had the iPhone 4 and 4s. I haven't gotten a chance to call AT&T yet to see what they have to say about it, and, unfortunately, my school is in the middle of nowhere and my hometown doesn't have an Apple store anywhere near it so I don't think I'll be able to get to a genius bar any time soon, but I've done a little research and found some threads here that mention problems with the iPhone 5 and data usage. Most of these threads seem to be related to Verizon or are from iOS 6 (and my phone is updated to iOS 7.0.4, which is the latest update at this date), and I wondered if it was still a problem for people.
In the past few minutes, I have done the following to the phone:
Turned off Cellular Data
Turned off iCloud Backup
Turned off Cellular Data for all unnecessary apps
Turned off Location Services for all unnecessary apps
Turned off Notifications for all unnecessary apps
Changed all email accounts to manual
Turned off Diagnostics and Usage sending
Turned off Ad Tracking
Turned off Documents and Data
Now, not to sound spoiled, but I think this is both tedious and a pain in the rear end. It seems to me like it's just treating the symptoms rather than the disease itself, so to speak. I feel that for the money we pay for what is essentially a handheld computer with phone capabilities, I should be able to use it as such. When I've turned off Cellular Data in the past to remedy this problem, I notice that I don't receive texts from a lot of people, which is really frustrating, because I feel like I basically just have a glorified iPod. If I had wanted an iPod, I would have bought an iPod. So, basically, has anyone experienced this problem recently/found a solution that actually fixes the problem rather than just masking it? I feel bad about the overage charges and am very annoyed with the fact that my old iPhone seemed to work better than this new one, and that I can't seem to find much evidence of either Apple or AT&T making much of an effort to acknowledge or fix this expensive problem. My phone reports that my cellular data usage for the current period (which ends on February 11, and it is currently January 28) is 21 GB, and I find it very hard to believe this to be true.
I'm about to reset my phone and see if that does anything, but I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out here.
Thanks.

I'm not trying to minimize your issues, but I have an iPhone 5S and find that I have not had these types of problems on AT&T. I'm wonding if something has gotten stuck in a loop that is continually trying to use data. If you make a good backup of your phone, try restoring it as new, and do not add anything to the phone right away. Let the device run like this for a little while and see what kind of usage you have. You report you phone is showing usage of 21GB. Did you rese this setting on the phone to begin at your billing period? The reason I ask this is some people believe this setting resets on its own with your billing period, it does not. This has to be manually reset by the user, so it might not be that accurate depending on the last time that you reset it.
If the phone seems to not use so much extra data during the period the device does not have extra apps on it, then try restoring from your backup and see what happens. If this increases your data usage quite fast again, then there is probably something corrupt in the backup that is causing this issue.

Excessive & unexplained pre-paid data usage

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