Huge Unknown Data Usage

[AB]

Bit of a strange one. Our mobile bills have just come in and one of our guys has managed to rack up £500 worth of overage on his 16GB EE plan.

Initially I hit the roof but when looking through the itemised bill, it appears his phone is using 50MB of data on regular occasions throughout the month without reason.

Here's the weird bit... (it's an iPhone X) when you go into settings/mobile data to see what has been using it, "system services" says 77GB!!! He got his phone the same time as me and mine is at 7GB.

Even weirder still is when you click "system services" and get the breakdown of what has been using the data, it doesn't get anywhere near 77GB.

Anyone got any ideas?

[bazza white]

Try turn off updates unless connected to wifi.

[bristolracer]

BBC sounds/iplayer can be switched to download over mobile data. Other apps (spotify etc) can as well.

Has he got access to wifi? If the phone finds no wifi or has the wifi switched off, it may start pulling down data via mobile.

[bazza white]

Could something be tethering though the phone.

[ging84]

the 50mb could be to do with billing in blocks rather than the usage actually following that pattern

[anonymous-user]

My bet would be tethering, either on purpose or inadvertently. Does the user regularly travel with a laptop and plug phone into laptop to charge via USB? I've seen that result in the phone being used as a USB WiFi hotspot.

[Alias218]

It’s not backing up to a cloud server is it?

[jurbie]

I doubt tethering would use that much even if by accident. I have a 25gb limit and will always tether to my phone instead of using any kind of public wifi. This isn't just for light usage either, I often have to move some fairly big files around. Add Spotify and maps when I'm on the road yet I rarely use more than a quarter of my monthly allowance.

I used to get a daily breakdown of usage and the largest amount in one day was 3gb after tethering to my phone to watch around 6 hours of the Bathurst 12 hours.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Something similar happened to me once and it took many calls to my provider for them to believe I wasn't at fault. Finally during a call to them they were checking my usage in real time and asked what I was downloading/doing with my phone as it was currently sucking data faster than was actually possible on my signal.

My phone was switched off..

I am not sure they figured it out, but they sent me a new sim and didn't charge me for the data.

[The_Jackal]

Sounds like he synced his whole iCloud.
If it was an app, it would show under that app as using the data.

[clived]

Phone backup to iCloud?