# How did this cellphone thief use 32 GB of data in a few hours **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 26, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229 "2017-01-26T15:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/1 "2017-01-26T15:19:10Z")
My iphone was stolen last night. Early this morning, I noticed that they had used all of my data, 32 GB. In a typical month, I can’t even begin to make a dent in 32 GB. What would a thief do that is so data intensive? ---
**Author:** ![SigMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/2 "2017-01-26T15:22:20Z")
Porn sites? ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/3 "2017-01-26T15:24:58Z")
Another possibility is streaming a ton of video. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/4 "2017-01-26T15:28:57Z")
They probably were not using the data just through the phone interface. I doubt they were watching movies on the phone. I’m guessing they used your phone like a wifi hotspot and had computers uploading/downloading something. If you contact your provider, you may be able to get a list of websites they contacted during that time. You should probably also let them know your phone was stolen in case that data was from some sort of illegal activity. You don’t want the police thinking you were doing it. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/5 "2017-01-26T18:45:54Z")
Man. I have a cap of 10 GB a month on my 4G data. After that, it’s throttled. At 2G speeds, it would take about three months for me to use 32 GB. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/6 "2017-01-26T18:49:53Z")
You can blow 32 GB downloading a single Bluray disc from a torrent. (For example.) ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/7 "2017-01-26T19:12:11Z")
My daughter used up 8-10 G in about 12 hours one time. I want to say she was downloading a bunch of games, and I am thinking that a whole bunch of unwanted material came down with those games. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/8 "2017-01-26T19:23:42Z")
Just out of curiosity, I just checked for the largest torrent for a popular series. Game of Thrones was the first thing that came to mind. There is a torrent of season 1 on Bluray that is 214 GB. (Sounds like a lot, but my ISP’s speed is 60 megabits a second, which means you could download a file that size in less than 9 hours.) ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/9 "2017-01-26T20:22:10Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Just out of curiosity, I just checked for the largest torrent for a popular series. Game of Thrones was the first thing that came to mind. There is a torrent of season 1 on Bluray that is 214 GB. > > (Sounds like a lot, but my ISP’s speed is 60 megabits a second, which means you could download a file that size in less than 9 hours.) I was curious so I looked up how big all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was, apparently it’s only a 140GB torrent for all 200 hour and a half long episodes. Granted since most of them never came on DVD I imagine most of them are 700MB AVI rips, and I can’t imagine how big that file would be if you were to somehow get blu-ray quality rips of each movie. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/10 "2017-01-26T20:25:53Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You can blow 32 GB downloading a single Bluray disc from a torrent. (For example.) On a cellphone? Most cell plans have a high speed cap. As I noted, I’m limited to 10 GB of 4G data per month. After that, you’re usually restricted to about 128 kps. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/11 "2017-01-26T20:53:01Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > On a cellphone? Most cell plans have a high speed cap. As I noted, I’m limited to 10 GB of 4G data per month. After that, you’re usually restricted to about 128 kps. No, I was just giving an example of something trivial (a couple of hours of movie viewing) that still takes up multiple gigabytes of data. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/12 "2017-01-26T20:59:16Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > I can’t imagine how big that file would be if you were to somehow get blu-ray quality rips of each movie. Depends on the codec you use. The current highest compression for a given quality is [h.265](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding) (unless there is something even newer that I don’t know about) which can give darn good HD video quality at a few hundred kilobits per second–but is very CPU intensive. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/13 "2017-01-26T21:11:03Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > No, I was just giving an example of something trivial (a couple of hours of movie viewing) that still takes up multiple gigabytes of data. Which is not relevant to the OP. The thief who stole **dalej42’s** iPhone burned through 32 GB of his mobile data, not on a computer. There may be wireless plans that let you have couple of hundred GB of data a month, but they’re not common. Once you use 5 or 10 GB in a month, a wireless connection isn’t practical for downloading anything on a throttled connection. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/14 "2017-01-26T21:14:53Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Which is not relevant to the OP. The thief who stole **dalej42’s** iPhone burned through 32 GB of his mobile data, not on a computer. And filmore said “I’m guessing they used your phone like a wifi hotspot and had computers uploading/downloading something.”–which is a reasonable guess. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/15 "2017-01-26T21:17:04Z")
NM. Withdrawn. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/16 "2017-01-26T21:20:56Z")
Bad math deleted. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/17 "2017-01-26T22:22:31Z")
I’ve binge watched shows on my phone for about 6 hours a day for 5 days for a month and I think my peak usage was about 45GBs. I use a lot of data on the side too, but no torrents which would seem to be the only way to get that much data in that short of a time. (I’m still locked into an old Sprint plan of unlimited text and data at 4G for $80 a month.) ---
**Author:** ![JpnDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/18 "2017-01-27T01:20:43Z")
A friend of mine has a portable Wi-Fi router here in Japan. She uses 10-12GB daily mostly watching YouTube. No torrents or other downloads. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/19 "2017-01-27T01:31:34Z")
If you’re curious I think for most metered cell phone plans like Verizon etc. you can go the web interface for your account and a few menus in get a read out of how the data you used was allocated re streaming, media sites etc. ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-this-cellphone-thief-use-32-gb-of-data-in-a-few-hours/778229/20 "2017-01-27T01:58:21Z")
The first thing that came to mind is that they were distributing kiddie porn around the world.