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Unexplainable data usage issues

Clementine_3

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OK, so here's the deal. My nephew watches YouTube and Netflix and plays online games. Most of the time he's home and on wifi (auto connects), he's only allowed to use his phone when he's on the bus (school and summer school), so I expect data to show then and it does. Sometimes they go camping for the weekend, again, I expect usage and it shows. When I say shows I mean I can see what time he was on and how much data he used. Not what he was using exactly, just time and amount. But you can see where the data is going in settings/data, and it's YouTube and Netflix. All makes sense, no issues, we are good.

Here's where we are not good. For the last few months his line has been showing ~.25 - .5 GB's being used in the middle of the night. It adds up to ~4 - 5 GB's a month. I have 2 issues with this, he is NOT up then using the phone AND it should be connected to wifi anyway. I know wifi will cut out/go to sleep but I'm not sure that's really the issue. And even if wifi is off there still should not be that much data usage at that time.

I finally got around to calling Verizon and they told me exactly what I knew the would tell me, he's using the phone and bypassing wifi. Ummm. No. Something is auto-starting/connecting and bypassing wifi. They can see what the phone is connecting to but can't tell, it's a privacy issue and against the law. I get that, I work in insurance so know all about that. She just kept telling me to turn data off at night, use the Family Base tool ($5/month) to turn data off/restrict his usage, check to make sure data is on blah blah blah. She was pretty sure I was lying when I insisted he wasn't using it and was pretty sure he was toggling wifi off when he was using it at 2 in the morning. So, besides getting frustrated I'm not going to get to the bottom of it through them. Since we don't go over our allowance they couldn't be bothered, and even if we did their records show the data being used.

I have gone through his phone (Moto X 1st gen) and disabled all the Verizon crap that I can, have Play set to only update on wifi, set background restrictions on YT/Netflix/his games etc. Every line on the account has middle of the night data usage, but it's so little it doesn't matter, but his is out of control. I need to find out what's going on so I can stop it, what is starting itself and hogging data while bypassing wifi? I know I can have him/my sister turn data off at night and back on in the morning but I shouldn't have to. The phone is not rooted so I can't use Tasker to do it and I'm not spending $5/month to have Verizon do it when I swear it's their issue anyway! There are a lot of similar posts all over the big internet but no reason or solution.

Any ideas? Do you see late night usage that shouldn't be there? Has your usage increased for no apparent reason lately (last may 4-6 months)?
(sorry for the novella but good gaks I have to figure this out)
 
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