“Verizon Msg: You’ve used about 50% of your 3GB data plan…”
I received this warning only 2 days before my data plan started over. I thought nothing about it at the time. Then, a few days later, after the start of the billing cycle, I got:
“Verizon Msg: You’ve used about 50% of your 3GB data plan…”
That didn’t seem right. A Gig and a half in about 20 days?! I hadn’t used any streaming service lately – especially over LTE. But, I was able to add another Gig to my plan for free, so I thought nothing of it. But, a week later, after the start of another billing cycle:
“Verizon Msg: You’ve used about 75% of your 4GB data plan”
No! This will not stand! I delved into the Cellular settings in the Settings app and found that ‘Documents and Sync’ was using way too much data – over LTE even when I was using Wifi! I called Apple and started a ticket. But, that takes time for them to come up with a solution. So, I started to document and troubleshoot. I disabled iCloud settings and found that nothing short of disabling iCloud on the device would still cause ‘data bleeding’ as I called it.
I surmised that something was wrong with some basic sync between my other iCloud-enabled devices – even over LTE – with them on the same Wifi network! At some point, I came to the Keychain.app and saw the iCloud Keychain.
I emptied it out. I wasn’t able to backup anything in it. After about 30 minutes to make sure it wasn’t a convenient pause, the ‘data bleeding’ was stopped!
Here’s the interesting/scary thing: I had disabled Keychain sync on the iPhone and it still tried to sync!
I hope that was a bug and not how it really works!
Now, after 4 days after my data plan has restarted, I am seeing better cellular usage – and battery usage!
Also fixed after this, I usually had old Wifi networks in my Preferred Networks list in the System Preferences app. They were now gone!