Telecom iPad mystery data spikes

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jawnbc

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#141162 3-Mar-2014 11:00

Got a painful surprise for my recent Telecom bill: a serious of data spikes:

20GB
20GB
4GB
1.5GB
588MB
1.643GB
3.498GB
1.360GB
884MB
529MB
4.105GB
7.742GB
11.549GB

Thing is, the iPad's been on the bookshelf for most of this, keypad locked and sometimes discharged. Some of these have been during the day when I'm at work or in the middle of the night.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can: 1.) figure out what the device was ostensibly doing, and 2.) avoid this in the future?

Cheers!

1 | 2 | 3

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#998028 3-Mar-2014 11:06

Is iCloud turned on with your iPad??

And you have enabled sync over 3G?

And taken a lot of photos and you have enabled syncing Photos to iCloud and filled up your iCloud beyond it's current storage capacity?

My wife's iPhone kept on attempting to sync when she had blown out her iCloud when she enabled photo sync, and blew out her icloud.

I would suspect that may have happened.

Another interesting gotcha is when you upgrade to a later version of IOS, and that likes to download over 3G if you have sync enabled.

Also, Dropbox is another similar offender if you blow out your cloud storage from too many photos.

Edit: Typos and added Dropbox.

gehenna

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#998033 3-Mar-2014 11:15

Do you have OneDrive and if so is Photo Backup enabled?

jawnbc

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#998067 3-Mar-2014 12:00

Thanks folks.

Don't use iCloud or One Drive. My Dropbox is at zero because I migrated to GoogleDrive (but haven't set up Google Drive on the iPad yet).

mattwnz

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#998083 3-Mar-2014 12:24

Does the ipad have some form of log for data use ?

JarrodM

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#998086 3-Mar-2014 12:26

If you're on iOS 7 go into the settings then mobile and you can see all the apps and how much mobile data they've used.

josephhinvest

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#998162 3-Mar-2014 14:00

Apps updating in the background? App Store > Updates will tell you when updates were done if auto updating enabled.
You can in Settings specify which apps use cellular data at all. Quite handy.

Cheers,
Joseph

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jawnbc

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#998178 3-Mar-2014 14:06

Very good suggestions--will take a look.

mattwnz

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#998218 3-Mar-2014 15:07

I would expect that auto downloads over 3g would be disabled by default, but you nver know. Personally I always have 3g disabled unless I am specifically using it, just in case.

Batman

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#998261 3-Mar-2014 16:35

You only have an iPad in the entire house (if broadband)?

Is this on broadband or 3g?

JoshWright

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#998277 3-Mar-2014 16:52

joker97: You only have an iPad in the entire house (if broadband)?

Is this on broadband or 3g?

I know with my iPhone when it's locked it will disconnect from the Wi-Fi network and default to 3G.

PhantomNVD

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#998285 3-Mar-2014 17:04

Also, if the iPad is sharing via wifi,it could be tanking your laptop/phone/torrents too?

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mattwnz

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#998290 3-Mar-2014 17:16

This is one advantage of using prepay over postpay, in that with prepay you have a cap. Whereas with postpay, you could get nasty surprises, unless I guess you setup a quota on it if possible. You could also get nasty surprises woth prepay, in that all you data gets used up, but at least the cost is fixed.

Paulthagerous

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#998313 3-Mar-2014 18:19

mattwnz: This is one advantage of using prepay over postpay, in that with prepay you have a cap. Whereas with postpay, you could get nasty surprises, unless I guess you setup a quota on it if possible. You could also get nasty surprises woth prepay, in that all you data gets used up, but at least the cost is fixed.

We have Smart Caps available on most of our current Postpaid plans, which allow you to set a limit so if you go through your allowance it can either stop mobile data with no additional charge (Calls/txt/WiFi work as normal, though MMS won't), or go over by a set amount only. Note this is not available on old/grandfathered plans. Therefore no nasty data bill surprises :)

Link with more info:
Data Caps

NonprayingMantis

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#998316 3-Mar-2014 18:30

Guys,
I'm pretty sure he is referring to usage over fixed line.

talking about the latest bill (singular), then listing data usage amounts of 10-20GB (per day?) would be pretty rare on 3/4G

And if that usage were over 3/4G, he might be a little more emotional about the $$$$$$ he has been spending :-D