What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
MARSHO10
Newbie

He has never gone above 1 per month -- suddenly he's above 10 and Verizon is nailing me with overage charges. He says he has done nothing different with his phone. Help, please.

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Re: What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
Ann154
Community Leader
Community Leader

Which phone model does he have? Have you looked at the data usage on the phone itself to see what apps are using the data? Just because how the person using the phone doesn't change doesn't mean that the applications have changed how they are using the data. Settings could have changed to allow the cellular data to be used when it was previously set to use wifi only.

I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.

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Re: What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
mama23dogs
Legend

Verizon is under the gun because they have 10 times the usual reports of unreasonable and unsubstantiated data overage.  While it's still the least likely reason for overage the answer is still on your phone. 

Look in settings, data usage and see what apps used the most amount of data. 

Make sure the phone is connecting to wifi.

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Re: What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
alicias_vzw
Verizon Employee

MARSHO10,

Help is here! A large spike in data usage is definitely concerning. Please allow me to help look into this matter for you. I’m going to send you a Private Message. Please reply to the Private Message so that I can gather much needed information to assist you. Thanks!

AliciaS_VZW

Follow us on TWITTER @VZWSupport

If my response answered your question please click the _Correct Answer_ button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

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Re: What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
jeanie111
Enthusiast - Level 2

New feature added in a software update on my phone (iPhone) called Wifi Assist. This uses data from plan if the Wifi signal is weak. I have Fios and yet it used up all my data really fast. I turned off the Wifi Assist feature in the setting to not allow this to continue. It seems Verizon would mention this but I haven't seen it yet in anyone's posts. Also you can set the phone to 3G instead of the 4G LTE which uses up data faster also. Turn off apps not being used regularly. There is a setting in the phone that could be on which allows for automatic updates on apps and this will use data, even while your sleeping. I hope this helps.

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Re: What are some reasons my son's data usage has suddenly skyrocketed?
mama23dogs
Legend

Wifi assist is not new.  It was added with iOS 9  in September 2015.

I leave it on on my iPad and never had much data use at all.

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