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We got my son a new iphone 5 around Christmas to replace his iphone 3GS. He was on the 2 GB data plan and only used about 300 MB's a month. A couple of days after getting the new phone, I get an email that he is about to exceed the data plan limits. I upped the plan to 3 GB's and forgot about it until the next month. That worked fine for a while, although 10X the usage of the previous phone and not doing anything different. Then he started going over the 3 GB every month and I had to pay for the overage every month. I moved him to a 5 GB plan last month because I get a discount on that plan so it costs the same as the 3GB with 1 GB overage, and he went over that! We are only 2 days into the new billing cycle and he has used 500 MB's already, it is out of control. He says he isn't' doing anything different. I have called Apple, called AT & T and we have changed all kinds of settings but it is still gobbling up data like crazy. I look at the usage on the AT & T website and it even shows data usage when he is home and it should be using wi-fi only. I have found all kinds of forums about this issue but can't find any answers that work. Anybody have any suggestions or ideas?

If iPhone is anything like Android, it should have data usage breakdown by both time and by app.

If it isn't then apple can suck a fat [expletive].

edit: screenshot from my phone

[SHOW]

There's no built-in breakdown by app, unfortunately. There are some apps like "Data Usage" that will track that for you, though (I haven't used it, don't know if it's good).

What I would do, however, is turn off LTE on his phone - so that it'll be real hard to use so much data. For an experiment I'd also try shutting data off entirely for a day - see what happens.

I'd also triple-check that he connects to WiFi when at home.

I have a few pieces of advice for you:

1. First, figure out if the WiFi is working. It's easy to test if it is or not. First, have him connect to your wireless router at home. You know you're connected because you get a WiFi icon at the top of the iOS interface (if you're not, it'll say "3G/4G"). Next, turn of the cellular data completely. You can do this by going to "Settings => General => Cellular" and filling "Cellular Data" to "off". If he is properly connected to the router, he should still be able to access the internet. If he can't access the internet at all, it means he's not connecting to the router correctly.

Cell phone devices always use WiFi instead of the cellular network if it has access to both. If it's still using the cellular network, it means the WiFi isn't working properly. I use my phone a lot and only have 200 MB of data a month; however, I never go over, because 95% of the time I'm on WiFi at home/work.

2. Have him monitor his data usage more closely. If he calls "*3282#" (star-three-two-eight-two-pound) on his phone, it'll sent him a text message with his current data usage for the month (although the total it gives you is like 5-6 hours old). If he gets close, tell him to shut off his data (like I described in point #1). AT&T should also send courtesy reminders too ("hey, you've used 60% of your data, heads up...")

3. How old is he? Is he a teen that really doesn't care about overages? Like, maybe he feigns concern/sympathy, but ultimately doesn't really care since he's not paying for it? If that's the case, you can also consider the "data overage insurance". It's $5 a month, and if he hits his limit, it'll automatically shut off his data and prevent him from using more. This is the least preferable option, but it's better to pay $5 for the insurance rather than $30 for another data bucket.

Cell phone service prices are out of control. The rates they charge for data use is absurd. When your plan is up with AT&T (I assume you're under contract), consider something like StraightTalk. Unlimited call/text/data for $45 a month. If you use a lot of data, they'll throttle how fast you can use it eventually, but you still have access. StraightTalk is month-to-month (no contracts). The catch is that you don't get subsidized phone prices. AT&T will sell you a brand new, $600+ phone for $200 if you sign a two-year agreement. With StraightTalk, you'll have to find a phone on your own. [Disclaimer: I don't have StraightTalk (but I'm planning on switching to it when my plan is up with AT&T), so I can't speak to the quality of the service.]

Thanks for the tips, yeah, he's 17 so he doesn't care that it is costing us when he goes over. I hate AT&T but it's hard to switch, we have 3 phones on the plan that all come up at different times. The Wi-Fi says it's on, and it isn't all the time that data is being used at home. A lot of the data usage at home is during the middle of the night. One AT&T person told me the Wi-Fi shuts off after it isn't used by the iphone 5 after a certain period so you need to shut of the cellular when at home, but I haven't heard of that anywhere else and that's a bunch of crap to have to manually turn it off and on. I think I'm going to try to drag him down to the Apple store, I read somewhere that some of the phones have a bug that the only wi-fi works sporadically, and the Apple customer service guy said they can run some diagnostics on it there. But the data when it should be Wi-Fi is only part of the problem, it seems from the timing of the usage that the minute he leaves home, huge hunks of data are being used like something is waiting to get away from Wi-Fi. I'm going to try one of the data tracking apps to see if we can figure out what is using so much data.

Does he use Google Now? It's part of the google search app that eats a magnificent amount of my battery/data, but is so amazing I never turn it off because I have unlimited data and keep my phone charged.

Nevermind, checking my usage, I'm already at 5gb this month and the majority of it is from MLB.tv and Hype Machine, less than 5% is from Google Now.

I'll bet it's from streaming video. He's watching a ton of streaming video that he doesn't want to talk about... it's probably My Little Pony. Your son is a Brony. It's time to accept that.

I use my phone often for surfing and streaming audio. Lot of google maps use. I am baffled at how he could use so much. As said above, surely theres a data usage screen. I have only gone over 2gig one month, and generally hover at 1.3 or so. Heck Pandora is only at 200mb the last three weeks and I feel like I have it on everywhere I go.

It's porn. The only time I've ever come close to my limit is streaming a lot of videos away from wifi.

I have an iPhone 4S with a data plan from AT&T. I share it with my uncle. When Apple put out iOS 6, we noticed that the phone started connecting to the internet every hour, using up some of the data plan. After a while it added up. I tried to figure out what app was doing this, but I couldn't identify it, so we both have to turn off the cellular connection when we aren't using the phone.

He's either streaming video, has an email or imessage/sms stuck in his outbox constantly trying to resend itself or there's a hardware issue where the phone is constantly reacquainting its signal.

Managing mobile devices is part of my job. This much data use is always video streaming. Two times out of hundreds it's been because of anything else. One hardware, one email glitch where the attachment being sent was too large for our mail server and instead of failing and quitting, it kept trying to resend. I suppose you could try deleting any mail accounts and turning off location services and killing all background tasks to rule out mail or background app usage.