Unused app using data and power

[Novice App User]

Hi,

I am a real novice when it comes to phones and apps. I have an older phone (Lollipop). I have an app that I have noticed uses a lot of data and battery power (relative to the other apps), even though I haven't used it in a long time. Why would this happen?

 

[Dannydet]

Please provide the make, model, and android version of the device and what is the app in question?

 

[Novice App User]

Please provide the make, model, and android version of the device and what is the app in question?

I decided to uninstall the app. But thanks for your reply.

 

[Hadron]

Well without knowing what app it was it was impossible to really answer. Some apps will run in the background and use data in the background just because of what they do. For example if you install a weather app and that app's default is to update its data every 30 minutes (which would be a silly default), and you never look at its settings and change this, then even if you don't open the app it's probably going to log on to its server and download an update every 30 minutes. That's a made-up example, but the point is to illustrate that an app could be doing this while legitimately carrying out its function, and that perhaps by looking at the app's settings you can make it behave more reasonably.

Conversely if you say that it was a flashlight app behaving like that then for certain it was some piece of trash data-mining your device and uploading your activities to the Chinese Government/Russian Mafia/Facebook (whichever you think is worst ).

Or it could be some badly-written piece of junk that was misbehaving through incompetence on the part of the developer rather than malice. This is why it's usefull to supply information such as what app you are asking about, because it's really hard to say anything useful without knowing that.