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Help Excessive data use
- Thread starter Mick Berg
- Start date
700M for the hotspot? Possibly the PC or whatever you were tethering was downloading data, like 'patch Tuesday' Windows security updates or the Windows 10 upgrade or something.
This has been coming up a lot lately, it happened to my LG on a lesser scale. I found a 300 MB Gmail cache in /data/data . Some issues with account syncing I think.
If you're using large amounts of data with your hotspot, that's not suspicious. The laptop or whatever you're tethering was using the data, that's what's going on.
Ted Nicoson
Lurker
I have had this problem on all 3 of my Android tablets for years, and now with my Android Smart Phone. I normally keep WIFI turned off except during my "free" data period (3 am to 7 am), otherwise I blow my allotment. Tonight, I had to turn on WIFI in my Samsung Galaxy 2 at a little after 9 pm, and even though all auto-updates are turned off (OS & Apps) it downloaded 100 Mb of something in several minutes. I think I have finally figured out what it is. You can turn off Auto-updates of Apps, but you can not keep it from "checking" for updates. So, how does Android check for App updates? It re-downloads each App to compare to the existing App to see if update is needed. If Auto-update is ON, it keeps the new download and discards the old, but if Auto-update is off, it just marks the App as needing an update, and discards (wastes) the new download and wastes your bandwidth in the process. That is the only thing I can think of that would waste the amount of bandwidth I have seen (and read about) over the past several years. The more Apps you have, the greater the waste. I finally got tired of the iPad wasting bandwidth during "normal" ("paid") hours and blocked the OS update URL on my WIFI router. I am going to try the same thing on Google Play for the Android Apps, so I can at least use WIFI for other things during "normal" hours. I would rather use an Android Fire Wall on each device, but I can not find one that will work on non-rooted devices, and I am just not into rooted devices. I realize this means editing the router every time I DO want to update, but it would be better than over-usage "fines". I will post the results of my efforts here in a few days. If my idea works, then we will know that Google Play is the source of our excessive data useage. I have hopes of this, as I have read several posts on other forums where some have resolved the issue by un-installing Google Play from their devices. I just don't think I would want to have to re-install Google Play everytime I wanted/needed a new App. It only takes a couple of minutes to edit the router block table.
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I've never heard of anything like that happening before, not with Android, and not with any OS. It's easy to determine if there's an update available for a given app, device has say a 1.0 version of whatever app intalled previously, Google Play reports an updated 1.1 version of same whatever app, and therefore it must be a newer version, and it can be downloaded and installed if the user desires.
Ted Nicoson
Lurker
No luck in blocking Google Play on the router. The Linksys E1200 will not block secure (https://) sites, but not a good idea anyway, as Google Play Services provide more than just App downloads and updates. Things you would not want to be without. I found the following thread on this subject over on the Android Central site. It discusses two different "flavors" of this problem. One is that Google Play just ignores your "Do not Auto-update" setting and updates the Apps anyway. This would explain the unexpected large downloads that I am seeing and have been taking as the "version comparison" process. It's not "comparing", it's literally "updating", even though that has supposedly been turned off. The other "flavor" is that the "Do not Auto-update" setting is mysteriously reset to "Auto-update". I have not experienced this "flavor" yet, but unlike iOS versions, which are identical on every device, every hardware manufacturer has their own "flavor" of each Android version to match their particular device. So, it follows that Android problems (bugs ?) would come in slightly different "flavors" from one manufacturer to another. For those who doubt, there are threads about this on several different forums. Just do a Google or Bing search on "Android excessive data usage" and settle in for a nice evening of reading:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ays-enabling-its-self-without-my-consent.html
At any rate, by the time I finished what I needed to do on my Samsung tonight, I had a slew of freshly updated apps, I had overrun my data allowance, which cost me a $5 fine to get back online, and yes - when I checked my update setting in Google Play, it is still set to "Do not Auto-update". I just wish my devices would allow me to "schedule" Auto-updates, so I could set them to update during my 3 am to 7 am "free" data period. Staying up until 3 several nights a week to do it manually gets really old really fast !
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ays-enabling-its-self-without-my-consent.html
At any rate, by the time I finished what I needed to do on my Samsung tonight, I had a slew of freshly updated apps, I had overrun my data allowance, which cost me a $5 fine to get back online, and yes - when I checked my update setting in Google Play, it is still set to "Do not Auto-update". I just wish my devices would allow me to "schedule" Auto-updates, so I could set them to update during my 3 am to 7 am "free" data period. Staying up until 3 several nights a week to do it manually gets really old really fast !
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