Grossly misrepresenting data usage

[K4HDirector]

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Message was edited by: Verizon Moderator (M)

[RobinMcV]

Maybe I should have gone with Cox Communications and their stupid bundle for $100.00 a month

[Dianne1959]

Steve, thanks for your posts on this matter. I am getting ready to buy a hotspot of some kind for my new tablet and I will keep this in mind and check usage (I'm not that computer savvy but I have friends...). If this is happening en masse  people should be furious and Verizon should be prosecuted, if this is not happening to everyone...well wouldn't it be good to find out. All you people out there already connected, start checking your usage against what you are billed. If you don't know how...find someone who does or research it online and calculate. Verizon is a large corp that has a lot of power but people actually have more power if they band together as Steve said. I am not accusing Verizon of anything but saying it's worth looking into.

[homeistexas]

I am glad to see your post. I don't use my phone a lot for data usage. But what I'm seeing is that when I go out my phone shows data usage even when my phone is in my pocket. I have turned email and everything else off and maybe only make a phone call or send a text message. on my phone in usage it shows cellular network data as being 1.3 MB sent and 5.7 MB received since  Oct. 11th.  online shows about the same. what I don't understand is how can I be using MB's of data when I'm not even using the phone. The only way I can stop the data usage is to turn off the cellular data in settings. I have done their upgrade to my iphone 5 but I think it is still reporting cellular data usage when I'm home on my wifi. Hope you get an answer to this problem soon if not I would be willing to join in the fight cause I got this phone so I could use it occasionally to be able to look online for info or check facebook but wright now I'm afraid to use it cause I live on a fixed income and can't afford to go over. I was one of those that gave up my unlimited for my upgrade but before I never even used more than 1G and I even tethered my laptop to my droid phone occasionally. Also I keep the 4G turned off cause when  turn it on the data usage goes up even when not using the phone. 

[abright4]

So, this doesn't probably happen on this forum very often but I owe an apology to Verizon.  After wracking up data usage up to 1.5 gigs per day (with no video streaming, no music downloads, etc. only working with my VPN), I decided to get serious about uncovering the issue. 

I downloaded Wireshark (for free!) and started running it in the background for my entire business day.  I saw that occasionally the Dropbox program was accessing/updating things so I deleted that because I no longer use it.  I also did Ctrl+Alt+Delete on my computer to see what process had the highest usage (you can click on Mem usage to sort from lowest to highest). There was service running taking up an extreme amount of data.  I googled the name of the service & saw that I didn't need to have it running constantly.  After I configured this service to run manually, I no longer saw the extreme data usage. In fact, the usage dropped to only 170-190 megs/day (much, much, much better than 1.5 gigs/day).  I am still analyzing the problem & will sometimes see Verizon report over what Wireshark has reported & sometimes under but it's a much more realistic charge of my actual data usage (within 10%).  I hope this helps someone out there with a similar issue.

[Wildman]

Glad you identified your data use discrepancy, sometimes its thing like apps running in background that explains unexplained data use and it can be resolved with some research.

It makes a big person to admit that they made a error and I hope your info helps others with similar issues.

Thanks for update...

[jeffrey0707]

I want to be  part of this group!!

[lauraswink]

Hey Steve!! I want in on this one. I can't understand what is going on. When I had my 3G connection, I never used anymore than about 2 - 3 GB per month on everything I did on my computer. I uploaded files to websites, pictures to Facebook, Pictures to Bonanza, listened to short podcasts of tutorials for web design (literally, 2 - 8 minutes each, but I did many of those per day) occasionally watched YouTube videos and on and on it went, I never limited myself.

Fast forward to getting a new Macintosh and the 4G LTE upgrade and decided that since I was unable to find a job after being unemployed for a year I would begin to work as a freelance artist. This could be going well, but now my usage is so out of whack I can't figure out what the hell is going on. Just today I looked at my usage details and in a span of less than four minutes I used 1.25 GB of data. I had the computer on for hours and hours that day, and now I only use the computer for job search, portfolio building and contact customers. I don't do non-work related stuff anymore (I have a tablet for that now)

I have called and spoken to one of their engineers and he claims I am downloading music and movies, but I am not. I don't understand how I can so quickly  burn through 1.25GB of data in four short minutes. I don't know what is going on here - I won't be able to support myself if every last dollar I make is going to Verizon for whatever the hell their data usage decides it's going to charge me.

Have you found our anything on this since your last post? It's so frustrating and Verizon is absolutely no help. If this continues, we are going to look into going with another service and just paying the fees for breaking our contract. I can't work and have this happening. I've already used up 9.5 GB for this month, and it's barely half over - and I am doing less than what I was doing on the internet when I had the old system. At this point, I will have used 18+ GB. I could understand overages of 1 or 2GB for the faster connection - but almost 10X that amount? Something's fishy.

Contact me if you wish.

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Thanks

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[Wildman]

Have you took into consideration applications on the pc that users do not usually think of that usesa data like email client checking server, antivirus updating and scanning web files, photo syncing with cloud base clients and many other possiblities.

This is one thing diffrerent about a desktop and mobile device, a device is usually configured to minimize fata use but a desktop is usually connected to a hard connection so the transferring of large amounts of data isnt considered as a issue.   I would investigate all these things on the PC in question to verify this isnt the nature of your issues.

[lauraswink]

I don't have an iCloud account, let alone use it - so there's no chance that the problem is there, even my firewall isn't on, so it can't possible be scanning anything. I have a few applications on the Mac: clock, calculator, calendar and weather, I doubt these things are downloading or using any kind of data on the level that I am seeing being used by the system. There's no antivirus, I'm on a Mac, there's little to worry about regarding this manner.

I'm still left with huge questions, I did download Wireshark and I plan on attempting to use it to see what's going on, but admittedly - I have a lot of difficulty with highly techy things - so I don't have a lot of  hope this is going to give me any answers.

The problem still remains and my bills are skyrocketing with no real answers in sight.