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.

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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".

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 Excessive Data Usage Mapping Services

I have had my Iphone 5 since December 2013. Recently I have been having problems with my cellular data usage where my phone will use more than 900mb a day. After investigating the issue I noticed that the biggest problem is mapping services. This was not making sense as frequent location settings and all location settings are switched off. I went to my service provider MTC (This is the service provider in Namibia, Africa) and they advised me to upgrade to IOS 7.1.2. According to them Apple has made more services available on our carrier and that I needed the newest IOS to be able to manage these services.
I have updated my IOS to 7.1.2 yesterday 28 July at 12:00. Since then till yesterday afternoon at 17:00 my phone used over 500mb of which 418mb was for system services which after investigation revealed that 415mb was for mapping services. The location settings and frequent location settings are still switch off, but I am still using data for mapping services. The data in Namibia is not the cheapest and this has caused me to have to switch off my cellular data to ensure that I don't run my cellphone bill through the roof. I am now sitting with an equivalent of a Nokia 3310 as I can only sms and phone from my Iphone. I do not have access to WIFI so using that is not an option.
I have a friend with a Iphone 5S and one with and Iphone 4 and they do not seem to have the same problem as I do. Is it only Iphone 5?
If anyone has the same problem, I hear that it is also the case in South Africa, please help me make it heard by Apple or give me a solution if you have one.

I see about 500MB for "Time & Location" tracking. You can check here: Mobile Network -> System tasks -> Time & Location (roughly translated from German iOS 7 menu. Can someone please write down the correct english menu entries?).
I believe it is the Google App (https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/id284815942?mt=8), which is tracking me (https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0). I like beeing tracked since i'm sometimes curious where i have spent my time;). But 500MB is far too much - i have only 1GB per month.

IPhone 5 excessive data usage recently?

I have never come close to using my 4gb data plan but in the last week, my phone is using (receiving) nearly 1gb of data a day. While at home and work i'm on wifi which leaves the minimal driving time in between on a LTE network. AT&T said they had a meeting with Apple and that Apple is aware of a data leak. I replaced my iPhone and the same thing. Any suggestions?

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.

IPhone 5 excessive data usage - possible fix

I, like many customers here, have had a major increase in data usage with the iPhone 5. In fact I blew through 1.3 gigs of data in just a couple weeks even though I use wifi 80% of the time.
A couple days ago I restored my phone to its factory settings through iTunes, which installed a fresh version of iOS 6.0.1. This seems to have cured the problem with data and wifi. When I got the iPhone 5 I had restored it from a backup which was from my iPhone 4. Somehow installing a fresh version of iOS 6 on my phone has fixed the problem.
I’m guessing there is a glitch when installing an iPhone 4 backup onto a iPhone 5.

Did you lose anything in the process of doing that? Any tips? Appreciate the help in advance.

Iphone 5 excessive data usage

recently bought 2 iphone 5s and yesterday one of them started sending huge amounts of data. The sent data is 6 times the amount received. My other phone is complelely opposite with regard to sending and receiving and we've never used anywhere near this much data before. Verizon rep doubled the amount of data so we do not exceed the limit this month, but the way this phone is sending data it doesn't appear it will be enough. All apps and the OS are updated. All applications are closed and the data usuage is piling up (which is fine at home on our wifi but I'm gong to have to turn the phone off if I leave). I haven't seen an aswer to this problem yet, and there are lots of posts about it.

You have a rogue application or a corrupted email/exchange account constantly pinging the internet.
Restore your phone as a NEW device; set it up from scratch.

Iphone 4s excessive data usage

I turned on my phone this morning and had zero internet connection. O2 Guru told me I'd used up all 1GB data. Recently I received a warning text saying I was almost at the end of my allowance so I started monitoring it throughout the day and it was being eaten up. I have had the phone over a year and it's only now that my data is disappearing. I wonder if it's anything to do with the latest iOs 6.1.3? I have had recurrent signal issues for a while too.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks
P.S I recently added the Candy Crush app, is that known to be buggy? It's the only app I have added to the phone in months.

Check the outbox folders, it is possible that an email is stuck constantly trying to send.
The issues is not 6.1.3 related.

Iphone 6 Excessive Data Usage

I recently signed a new contract to get the iphone6 at a discount. Thus, I had to remove my unlimited data plan ( so so sad ) I've been monitoring my data since. Yesterday at 1:45 it was using 335mb and 135mb around 6pm. The only thing I was actively doing was listening to spotify in my car.
I'm really concerned and rather annoyed that 1/4 of my data has been gobbled up in less than 1 day... I thought 2gb would be enough because when i had the iphon4s I barely reached 1gig in a month.
What's the goingz onz????

What is going on is that going from a slow 3G device to a faster 4G LTE device will use 2 to 2.5 times more data for doing "the same stuff".
The the numbers you give are consistent for a few hours of music streaming. You can try to turn down the quality on Spotify to use less data. Remember the times are when the tower reports the data, not when you use it. That data will have all been used in the hours prior to the reported time.
If you were using about a gig on 3G, expect to need about 3 gig on LTE.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1347101

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.

IPhone 4s iOs 6 data usage problems on Verizon

Last night around 6PM I lifted the usage controls on my teenage cousin's iphone 4s. We had never set a data limit for the phone because she only uses it for internet when at home on the wifi network. We only had it on her phone to be able to block unwanted numbers, but the feature also allows customers to set data caps, internet restrictions by age ect.
Prior to last night her usuage was minimal. However, within 6 hrs of the usuage control being lifted suddenly I was notified we'd hit 50% of our 6g data plan. In the morning when I woke up I had a text saying we'd hit 75% of our usage plan. I logged into Verizon and it indicated she had consumed 4.6g.
I spoke with Verizon and the first reprepresenative told me that this was a known iOs 6 issue for iphones and asked me to check if the phone was using the that operating system. She said if it was Verizon would be giving credits to customers because it was a known issue. I hung up, called my aunt and learned that in fact iOs 6 was installed. She also confirmed that the phone settings had not changed. It was still only using wifi. Verizon data usage remained turned off.
I called Verizon back and spoke with a second representative who then told me that it was not an iOs 6 issue, but just an iPhone 5 issue. She said the previous information given to me was incorrect; it was hardware and not operating system based problem. I then reapplied usage controls and went in to set a data limit, for the first time, and discovered that the iPhone's data usage had now reached 5.4g of 6g. I still have 18 days left on my billing cycle and just .6g of data remaining. It seems crazy to me that I should have to set a cap on data usage for a phone using wifi to prevent that phone from maxing out verizon data, but that is what I have done until I can get to the bottom of this
The rep told me to visit Apple for further details. I also googled it and found stories on CNN and TheNextWeb reporting instances where individuals with the iOs 6 on iphone 4s were also experiencing problems, but nothing concrete on how to resolve it.
Can someone please clarify for me what is going on or where I can find a solution to this.
Thank you in advance.

The second rep is a moron. Yes it is a software issue and not just an iphone 5 one.
Something you didn't mention is what carrier software version is on the iphone. Verizon sent out a settings update around Oct 5th because of this issue. I believe you should be on 13.1. it's definitely something.1
I've heard talk if you go Settings-General-About it will OTA load the update but I'm not certain about this. Frankly I would wipe the phone and set it up new. During the restore iTunes should check that the software is up to date and find the carrier updates. Make sure your cousin has all her photos, contacts etc. And warn her that she'll lose her texts. Although I have heard if you google around someone figured out how to erase everything but backups from an iTunes backup file. That was for iOS 5 as I recall but it might still work. So have her do a backup in iTunes, duplicate it and play if you feel techie enough.

Iphone 6 plus excessive data usage

I got a iPhone 6 plus about too weeks ago. I realise I have been using a lot of data compared to my previous Samsung ativ. Previously I was using about 500-700mb a month on a 1gb data plan. I signed Vodafone for a 1.5gb data plan thinking it should be enough, only 4 days into my month I have already gone through 300mb with minimal usage. I have already turned off Itune updates, Icloud, background app refresh and I even tried turning off 4g. It is still using a lot of data, I have been tracking where the excessive data is coming from. Safari is the main course, I would go into 5-10 webpages and it would use 3-6mb and Facebook nearly uses 1mb for a refresh update. Everything else seem to be quite normal usage except those 2apps. I have tried restoring the phone to factory and restore my backup. At the moment it seems like Facebook seem to use a bit less but Safari is still the same. What can I do?

I did not see how to edit my post. I'm on Verizon. I have tried on Wifi and on cell tower. I can get on safari with no problem. I'm using ISO 8.1

Iphone 5 - anyone having huge cellular data usage problem on ATT

I upgraded from Iphone 3g to Iphone 5. Over a period of last year, My average monthly data usage is approx 400MB (total less than 5GB in a year). AT&T is reporting that my Iphone 5 data usage crossed 6GB in a 3 day period . I called AT&T and have to listen to LTE, Iphone 5 and Multiple app running in background non-sense as an explanation for 6GB data usage over a 3 day period. My Itune and app store does not download over cellular network. Even though Iphone 5 automatically creates an Icloud account during initial setup, I am not connected to Icloud on Iphone and never even logged on to Icloud account. IOS 6 setting for sending data diagnostic over cellular network is set to no.
I feel this is same bug which Verizon user are reporting and ATT is not commenting on it till now. How can I consume over 6GB worth of data over a 3 day period which is more than my total data usage for a year. That is equivalent of streaming hd video (approx 300 MB per hour) for 20 hours.
CNN link to Iphone 5 data bug story
http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/01/technology/iphone-5-data-overage/index.html
Anyone is having similiar problems?

There have been lots of discussions about this particular topic
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19398807#19398807
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19780554#19780554
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19802173#19802173
and the list goes on.
Apple has zero control over what AT&T does in regards to their plans for data, their charges for data, or anything to do with their service that you pay for every month

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.

Are there known data usage problems with iPhone 4S?

I just got my first iPhone. I barely know how to use the thing and pretty much only use it for checking my work email. I blew through 7 GB of data in 20 days. From everyone I've talked to there is no way I have done this based on my limited usage. So something is running in the background that I can't control. I've turned off the cellular setting and told it to only use wifi, and when I'm at home it appears to be using my wifi. I read some other comments here saying it could be a problem with the iOS, but it didn't seem like a definite answer. Any other ideas?

Last month I checked the data usage on my iPhone 4S three days after the start of a new billing cycle. To my shock I discovered that I had been charged with about 193 MB of usage. That was very odd because 193 MB is well above what my total data usage is each month. Immediately contacted AT&T Customer Service--twice. Each time they could not provide an explanation as to why the data usage was charged to my phone. All they could tell me was that all of the 193 MB were charged on the very day the new billing cycle started. They did try to sell me a larger data plan.
I thought maybe this was just an odd thing that couldn’t be explained. Kept a close eye on my data usage for the reminder of the billing cycle and didn’t have another large data charge. I still stayed well under the 300 MB plan limit even with the unexpected 193 MB of usage on day one.
Then my wife checks her iPhone 4S data usage on day one of this month's billing cycle at about 9 AM. She finds that she has been charged with 30 MB of data usage when she hasn't even used her phone. Again, 9 AM; day one of new billing cycle; 30 MB of usage; no active applications running. How can this be? She contacted AT&T Customer Service and once again they were no help. She made two phone calls and also spoke with one CS Manager, but no one could explain why she has been charged for the 30 MB. Anyone else having this problem? Please help us resolve this if you know what to do? Extremely frustrating to be charged for data we know we are not using. Getting no help from AT&T Customer No-Service.

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

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