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Sudden increase in data usage - WhatsApp

  • 26 October 2020
  • 5 replies
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My monthly account of £5.00 has always been adequate - until last month (mid-September onwards). Monthly usage is now exceeded despite no change in activity. It seems to eat up a lot of data even when idle and thanks to ‘usage’ limit being exceeded I now have a £30.99 bill to pay for the current month. I have uninstalled some apps and switched off almost all remaining applications bar email, Twitter and Test and Trace, yet the phone continues to eat up usage. I do not want to be charged £30+ monthly for something I rarely use. Can someone help me get this down to ‘normal’ usage please? 

 

Regards

Ken

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Best answer by Rory 31 October 2020, 10:56

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5 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

Hi @Ken2020,

I am sorry to hear about what has happened! 

Firstly, you may want to log into your account online to set up a bill cap. Setting one of £0 will mean you will not pay more than your monthly amount.

Secondly, does your phone have a Data Usage option inside the settings? This will show you what app is using the most data so you can take further action. Setting the usage dates to match your allowance dates will show an accurate level of usage over the course of the month.

Ryan

It looks like it’s Whatsapp with almost 2MB of data used in one month. My monthly allowance is only1MB. Why has this suddenly become a problem though?  I’ve been using Whatsapp for ages and I’ve never had any data issues before? (Also, I used the app this month as someone called me, not the other way round).

 

Ken

Userlevel 5
Badge +6

Hi @Ken2020, receiving a WhatsApp call would still use data, but I’d be very surprised if it used anything like 2GB, unless you were talking for two weeks straight. 

Has anybody been sending you photos or videos on WhatsApp? It sounds like your phone might have been automatically downloading these via your mobile network. In WhatsApp, tap the  symbol in the top-right corner and go to Settings > Data and storage usage > Media auto-download > When using mobile data and ensure all the file types are unticked. This will prevent any attachments being automatically downloaded over mobile data.

 

Thank you,

Rory

Thanks for advice. I had unticked all files except for photos and this is now been actioned. I have also uninstalled apps such as Kindle, Facebook, Spotify and disabled others which means my mobile has become a phone and email tool only. I’m still so concerned about running up more excessive bills that i keep it switched off except for once daily. I think therefore my options left are either use the Factory data reset feature (in which I lose 2 years of data) or buy another phone. This is a disaster.

Userlevel 4
Badge +10

Hi @Ken2020 

Having just made those changes you made above, that should net a difference moving forward.  So I guess right now you can just monitor that usage within your phone to see how things get on.

Usually within your settings, you can see what app’s have used x amount of data recently.  If need be, it might be worth resetting the stats in there so that you can get a better measurement of how much has been/ is being used nowadays. 

A factory reset shouldn’t be needed.

Why iD Mobile?