Data usage for something never used

[DeesPhone]

I received an alert from Verizon that my data usage was at 90%.  When I checked my account is shows that 77% of it was from Social media and networking (Facebook, twitter, pinterest, etc).  I never access any of this from my phone mainly because I don't trust the security of it so I only do this on my Mac desktop.  So how could this much of my data be used for something I have never accessed from my phone? This is ridiculous! It seems that there is a scam going on with Verizon.

[vzw_customer_support]

Thank you for reaching out to us. I can certainly understand your concern here. Do you have you apps set to update over Wi-Fi only? You can check this setting within the app store.

NicoleT_VZW

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[dexman · Accepted solution]

Smartphones and tablets use data to perform background administrative tasks.

As mentioned above, updating apps is one such task. Backing up contact lists, stored pictures, videos and music is another. Checking Email and retrieving text messages when not connected to WiFi eats data too.

The catagorizations used by the online checker are general in nature. The imbeded data checker in the phone(s)/tablet(s) might yield a more accurate breakdown.

[GZRX]

I find the data usage counter on my S5 to be quite accurate when compared to that of the Verizon app.  In addition to providing the ongoing total usage in a billing cycle the phone's counter also shows usage by individual apps.  That feature helps spot individual data hogs.

For phone data counter accuracy, it is necessary that the billing cycle of your plan be properly selected in the phone's data usage app. For some phones, it’s set it and forget it and for others, such as Apple devices, it is necessary to manually reset the data counter at the beginning of each billing cycle.