I’m on a pay as you go plan with Xfinity Mobile. In the past few years of my using it, I generally use less than 1 GB of data, so the price is perfect for me.
A few day ago, I got a notification of 50% usage. Great, expected. Then today, I got a notification of 100% usage, with no change in my usage habits. I then saw that somehow, between the 50% notification and just then, I used SIX GIGABYTES of data, about half a year’s worth.
According to my iPhone, it was Safari that used the data, but Safari’s own website usage records don’t show anything not measured in megabytes. I didn’t do any downloading, online games, or video watching; certainly not six gigs worth!
Xfinity’s temporary solution was to forgive the charges and put me on unlimited for a month, and I can switch back when my usual cycle on the pay as you go plan would end. This is a fine resolution, but I’m concerned about preventing such an unprecedented event from happening again.
Like I said, keeping unlimited would generally be a waste of money. I’d prefer to be able to do my usual web browsing on the go (which, again, has not changed in the past few years). None of the Xfinity employees were able to give any more details about my data usage, which is probably for the best.
Anyone have any thoughts about what happened? Any advice? Should I switch browsers from Safari, perhaps?
I’m a bit shaken by the surprise and all, so any advice is appreciated!
Until you can figure out what happened, you won’t solve the mystery. You said that Safari “used the data”. What told you that if you couldn’t see where the data came from or went to? Is it possible you’ve been hacked? That’s an awful lot of data to be unaccounted for.
I’m not sure if you can find more info about what happened, but to decrease the likelihood of it happening again, you can try Low-data mode in the cellular settings to help prevent unexpected background usage. Also turn off iCloud sync if that’s on.
If it happens again, and you still can’t figure out why, you may be hacked and you might want to do a clean reinstall on your phone, which is a pain in the ass.
Under Settings, Cellular, Cellular Data Usage, you can turn off cellular data access by app, so if you choose, Safari will only connect via WiFi. Also, the Cellular Data Usage screen sorts apps by the amount of cellular data used, in gigabytes, megabytes or kilobytes.
The amount of data listed as used by Safari in the Cellular Data Usage section is for the Current Period, which is just a continuously running total until you reset it. So unless you reset it after you got the 50% notification (or just happened to note how much data Safari had used up to that point), you can’t tell for sure that it was Safari that used the data. Is that what happened?
eta - I was typing this reply when you posted above. So you really knew how much data Safari had used beforehand?
You’re technically correct. While I had reset the data previously, it was quite a while ago. I made an educated assumption because no other app measured even 1 GB of data use, IIRC.
Safari keeps every tab open unless you manually close them, hiding little-used ones. Tap on the two overlapped squares down the lower-right of Safari - how many tabs are open?
If it really is a Safari thing, you can try closing any tabs you have that are opened, then go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Website Data > and tap Remove All Website Data. That probably won’t make a difference but it won’t hurt too much, you’ll have to log back in to any sites you were logged into. Before you delete the website data though, take a look at the top of the list and see what site is taking up the most data. It’s pretty unlikely, but if there is a site with 6 gigs cached on the iPhone, there’s your culprit.
I did see that Website Data list…and even the highest on the list is (a hair) below one gigabyte, which added to my confusion. Or maybe the culprit was just data that isn’t retained, so is not on the list?
Yes, the data isn’t necessarily retained. But as a comparison, the largest single cache of website data on my phone is only 77 MB and a total of about 350 MB and I can’t remember the last time I ever manually cleared it. So, even a hair under 1 GB seems like a lot (to me anyway), particularly if you weren’t doing stuff like watching videos in Safari. What was the site? Could you have been steaming audio and just forgot to pause it/turn it off?
One possibility is you navigated to a page containing a muted video ad without realizing it. Still, you would have had to have left it on that page for quite a while to use 6 GB.