Wierd data usage (fast and high)

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pope24

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So I have a iPhone 6S 64GB and a couple of weeks ago it burned through 1.7GB in about 20 minutes. (Network is Cell C)

This happened while I was driving to work and the offending process appears to be the Itunes Account service under system services.

Now I can't work out how this could have done this given that I was sitting in traffic at the time and not using my phone for anything other than checking WhatsApp and maybe FB and Twitter and Mail. But if any of those had caused the usage they would have accounted for the usage under the apps and not under the Itunes Account option.

This has never happened before in the six years I have been using an iPhone, and I can't see any reason why the phone would suddenly apparently max out the connection.

Of course this put me way out of bundle and now I am facing a massive bill and Cell C is going "Sorry the data came from your phone and you're liable for the usage."

While I am bleak about the huge bill I really want to know how this could happen so I can avoid this happening again.

Any insight would be gratefully accepted.
 
Toxic T said:
Under cellular data. Turn everything off but whatsapp.
Click to expand...

I've done that before. But then I give in to a moment of weakness and turn this on and that on...

I'm trying to figure out how the phone could suddenly pull down that amount of data without any (apparent) prompting from me.

And you can't turn system services off without disabling Cellular data completely. So this may have happened even if I had everything other than WhatsApp turned off.
 
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Something similar happened to me the other day in traffic. I was using google maps to travel to a place, and all of a sudden I received an sms from vodacom to say that my bundle was below 100MB after having around ~400MB. Like you, Itunes under System Services was the offending service that used my data.

Not sure why this happened, as I'm always connected to 3G. I did however disable Background App Refresh in Settings -> General, and switched off Use Cellular Data in Settings -> Itunes & App Stores.
 
Are you an Apple music subscriber?

Add as much as I generally appreciate Apple and their products - my experience is that when the little guy wants to phone home to the mothership, there ain't jack you can do to stop it...

In my case (about two years back), it was a corrupt iCloud everything following me getting a refurbished unit back, that blew holes through my data bundles, despite *everything* being switched off. Fortunately, I am on a top-up data option, so was spared the ugly surprise: I had to feed the beast to sort it out.

You're going to have to do some snooping to work out what has changed. It might be a once-off, but I would watch things carefully for a while. Don't assume that disabling everything will prevent data from being used via cellular.
 
If it was iTunes Accounts that was the culprit, it was either downloading all the data in your iCloud account, or backing up data to your iCloud Account. WhatsApp for example does this automatically on whichever schedule you choose. You can check the settings in the App.

In Settings, look for the following:

iTunes & App Stores -> Turn "Use Mobile Data" Off.
You could also turn the 3 options off themselves, but you will manually need to update Apps, set music to Download after adding on another device and manually check for iOS updates.
Mobile Data -> Turn "Wi-Fi Assist" Off
Mobile Data -> Turn all apps off except those you need, like Toxic T mentioned.
 
Switch off Wifi Assist.

Switch off iCloud Cellular.

Settings > Cellular / Mobile > Wifi Assist right at the bottom.

Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive > again right at the bottom.

Settings > iTunes & App Stores > Cellular Off.

Shouldn't be necessary to go any more granular than this. I bet you'll find one of the above three on.

I do blame Apple somewhat for obfuscating these settings out of view.
 
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