dragontology Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 Pretty much what it says on the tin. Had a coworker approach me about a problem on his phone. US Cellular Samsung Galaxy S5. He had a 4GB plan, used 8GB one month, and is on a 10GB plan, paying $140 a month, and doesn't think he should have to. I said, let's see what's using your data. Settings → Data usage, Facebook has used 2.7GB on mobile data alone. On Wi-Fi, it's used 5.71GB. That is on top of the 2.7GB it used on his data plan (and we both realize Wi-Fi usage doesn't count against his data plan). We checked his settings. Autoplay videos is set to Wi-Fi only. He doesn't have contact sync or photo upload enabled. I explained that with his phone's 12MP camera (I guessed), his pictures could be 3-5MB, but he would have to upload two hundred 5MB photos to hit 1GB, which is still a far cry from 2.7GB. I said maybe if he was always uploading video, it could get up that high. He says he's never uploaded video to Facebook, only a couple pictures a week. Best I could come up with was, I showed him how to enable data compression in Chrome, and showed him that he could access Facebook via the Chrome browser. He logged in on Chrome, then logged out — every time he is done using Facebook on his phone, he logs out. That wouldn't eat data, would it? Does logging out clear the cache? My cache stays at around 150-200MB. If he were generating that daily by clearing his cache, maybe, but I'm sure he doesn't know how to do that manually. TouchWiz might be doing it for him. Not sure on that. Another weird thing that happened is, either Chrome or Facebook tried to set his language to Portuguese, but only when he accessed Facebook through Chrome. That's some Matrix level weirdness, but I don't think it would explain the data. Anyway, just wondering if anyone's seen anything like that. I Googled high data usage [for] Android [with] Facebook, but only came up with some very light (by comparison) data usage. Someone hit 2.5GB with Facebook Messenger, but that's different, and he got no answers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torolol Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 block ads, it saves lots of data too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragontology Posted September 13, 2015 Author Share Posted September 13, 2015 He isn't rooted so that isn't an option. This isn't a guy I see all the time, so being his tech support guy — what you get for fiddling with someone else's computer or phone — isn't really an option for either of us. Facebook surely isn't pushing 9.4GB of ads. I haven't run without an ad blocker for a long time, but my wife does and is a Facebook addict and she isn't affected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragontology Posted September 13, 2015 Author Share Posted September 13, 2015 Would have edited my last post but I don't see the edit button. Anyway... I couldn't get it out of my head that he logs out every time, so I did an experiment with my phone (HTC One M8). Checked my Facebook cache. 64MB. So I open Facebook, and log out. Check the cache again — 3.7MB. Scroll Facebook about 10-20 pages, check cache. Around 6MB. Logged out, cache is back to 3.7MB. Scrolled Facebook even farther and got it up to 8MB. Cleared cache again. 3.7MB again. Similar results on his GS5. I'm not sure logging out of Facebook and rebuilding the cache every time accounts for 9GB, but it's a start. The man is a grandfather, and during the cache clearing trials, he opened a video of a baby. I respected his privacy and didn't look, but I wonder if he's been watching that video and having to download it every time. That and other videos. I told him to stop logging out of Facebook, at least to see if it brings his data usage back down. He already had it set to not use background data, and I showed him how to manually clear it out of memory (home button, recent button, swipe Facebook away). I know he doesn't need to and you probably know he doesn't need to, but he wanted a way to "get rid of it" until he needed it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasondefaoite Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 The video watching sounds a likely culprit. You mentioned earlier that autoplay videos was set to WiFi only, but if he still clicks to watch, it would load over the cellular connection. He mentioned he doesn't upload video, but maybe you should ask him how much video does he watch when not connected to WiFi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cacoe Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 (edited) Just a sidenote, you don't need to be rooted to block ads. Also, if there's no background data in use, then it HAS to be what he's doing while Facebook is in use. So he must be watching a LOAD of videos or uploading a load of them. It's the only explanation with that sort of usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remixedcat Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 touch.facebook.com ... you're welcome... -_- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 If he "has" to use facecrap he's better off using the site like mentioned already, the app is pure crap Also if he added his FB account to his phone it will try to sync his contacts to the phone contacts which will drive up data usage, I would remove it completely from the phone Settings - Accounts, and if the phone has nay sync options make sure it's removed from there also Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shockz Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 Disable autoplay of videos on news feed. Destroys your data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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