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Phone using insane amounts of data overnight while I'm connected to WiFi

I woke up this morning to an alert that my account was almost out of data. After checking usage amounts, I saw that my husband's phone had used over 14 GB of data this month, while his usual amount is closer to 5-6GB. Looking through the time-stamped data details, I saw that his phone used 2.45GB of data at 5:00am, a time in which he was sleeping and his phone was on the night stand next to him connected to WiFi. After some more searching, I found that there were a few other instances like this from earlier this month: 1.47GB at 5:26am, 3.36GB at 6:02am - all times when I know he was still in bed sleeping while his phone was on the nightstand next to him. I'm completely at loss as to how his phone is using upwards of 10GB this month while he is sleeping and it's connected to WiFi.

We already checked the following: WiFi assist is turned on, but it only registered using less than 1 MB; automatic app updates are turned off. Additionally, this is something that is only happening to his iPhone 8, and not mine (iPhone XR). I checked previous months, and nothing like this has happened before. Does anyone have tips or suggestions as to what could be causing this and/or why it is only happening suddenly? We've both been working from home and he stays at home 90% of the time... there is no reason his phone should be wasting 14+ GB of data in 3 weeks.

Comments

Verizon_Support

Thank you for reaching out today. Getting alerted that the data is running low would concern me too. Have you had any trouble with your home wifi recently? Do you know if any new applications or updates have been done on your husband's phone since this started?

rizzoka3

As far as I know, we haven't had any issues with home WiFi lately. It's possible WiFi is going out or is weak overnight, but I would assume that would affect my phone and data usage as well but it hasn't (I actually do have automatic app updates turned on for my phone).

He did update to the newest iOS14 lately, however I did around the same time as well and I haven't seen similar data spikes on my phone. He does have push notifications turned on for a number of apps that he will often get overnight, but it seems strange that this would only occur a few times a month, rather than every night, and for the data use to be so high on those occasions.

Ann154

Unless you are manually turning off the cellular data connection overnight or change the background settings for each application to prevent background data on cellular data, then the Apple's Wi-Fi sleep policy could affect if the phone uses the cellular data connection whenever the Wi-Fi is weak or sleeping to conserve battery life.

rizzoka3

Any idea why this would suddenly be happening and only happening a few days a month, instead of being something that I see consistently each day? I have never had this issue before, and so far over 3 weeks of this month we have had 5 instances like this that are accounting for 10+GB. I could see how that would apply if we were seeing large amounts of data use like this every single night, but the fact that it's so infrequent and yet so drastic is where I'm getting held up.

Ann154

The OS update could have reverted some of the application settings back to default to allow background data over cellular.

The other possibility is the cellular data connection wasn't manually turned off on those nights.

Verizon_Support

Have you tried a Network Reset? This can be done in Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

ScottD_VZW

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