My wife and I cannot figure out why last Verizon billing showed 1/3 of data usage on each phone was noted for video.We don't stream movies, YouTube, FaceTime etc. on phonesVerizon was no help.Any suggestions?

Monty-Rob wrote:My wife and I cannot figure out why last Verizon billing showed 1/3 of data usage on each phone was noted for video.We don't stream movies, YouTube, FaceTime etc. on phonesVerizon was no help.Any suggestions?call back and ask to be bumped to second level support or a supervisor on this.

Google, apps you name it use over a 1/2 of your data if you never touch the internet. Because the first call you make all of them are using your data in the background.Even if you turn off 'what apps they DO allow you to turn off', every time you pick up your phone all your apps have access to what they call upgrade or what ever in the background. And I found it to be daily.Within 2 days the bar chart said I had used 60% of my data and all I did was make 1 phone call.Interestingly my Iphone did not have a menu for where data is being used yet the burner smart phone I just bought has a complete menu what is using data and I was able to turn off almost all of it. These phones are the Walmart Chinese phones that are not smart enough to hide what data they are taking like apple does.Google has a death grip agreement with the phone company and you can NOT turn off most of the google background data usage. One menu even claimed if I turned off that google app the phone wouldn't work.:RI found it to be a great scam:You pay for x amount of data and their clients use 1/2 of it and then you pay for more data. A great example of the perfect scam. :(

Do you have automatic video play turned on in Facebook?

I see more and more website pages with embedded video, particularly news sites. I constantly see black boxes with text saying "you need to upgrade flash to properly experience this website". I have active-x and flash disabled intentionally. I would not be surprised if 1/3 or more of the content on pages you see is video.

If your phone browsers are displaying "desktop" webpages rather than "mobile" webpages you are streaming video data with every ad in motion and flash display. If you are connecting your phone to a laptop you are streaming even more and not realizing it. Bottom line is does it matter? Are you being charged extra for this or are you using up high speed bandwidth to a level that you will be throttled by Verizon to a slow internet speed on the phones? If not, it should not really matter if you use x% of data on video.

Can't figure out why 1/3 data usage on iPhone is for video?

13 Replies

tatest
Explorer II
Mar 16, 2015
I'm finding that almost all news links now go to video, and many want to play a commercial video first. Seems that they think nobody kniws how to read, we need talking heads to read us the news.

More people are embedding videos in their facebook posts, but the FB apps can be configured not to play videos.
Monty-Rob
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
Turned off auto play in Facebook
My wife had an overage charge from Verizon
Our phone plan is 2gb data for each phone...not shared
Thank you for suggestions....Rob
MrWizard
Moderator
Mar 15, 2015
are you sure that data useage was on the BILL
i would expect that kind of listing on the phone, i have verizon
i still get the paper statement in the mail every month
i have not looked online to see if my data useage is broken down by type of data

as stated above, its possible everything "flash" based "file.flv" is showing as video, and would be mainly adv, but could also be any gaming, done online
aka Farmville etc...
gerrym51
Explorer II
Mar 15, 2015
I dont have an iphone. However when traveling i have every device we have set for no updates until told. also no autoplay until told.

thats all the advice i have
mich800
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
I need to look at my bill now. I don't remember it stating my data breakdown by source.
x96mnn
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
global2 wrote:
choochooman74 may be right. Whenever I have usage complaints, Facebook is the first place I check. FB defaults to autoplay of videos in your news feed. You have to go to settings and disable that. Many vendors not only populate your news feed with unwanted ads, they also love using video.

Plus 2 or should say 3 on this. I had never ad the facebook app on my phone until recently and by data usage went through the roof. It was all facebook. The other program that's just as bad if not worse, Pinterest.
global2
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
choochooman74 may be right. Whenever I have usage complaints, Facebook is the first place I check. FB defaults to autoplay of videos in your news feed. You have to go to settings and disable that. Many vendors not only populate your news feed with unwanted ads, they also love using video.
amandasgramma
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
I have no answer for you here....the above answers seem legit. I WILL say this....if you're sharing (like we are) watch what the other person is doing. ROL. My DH (grrrr) did an upgrade on the GPS......1 1/2 hrs later, I picked up the Jetpack to turn it on, saw it on.....and about screamed!!!! It ate up 5 GB of memory in that 1 1/2 hrs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, he's in the doghouse. oh, that was 2 days after we bought it...............
1775
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
If your phone browsers are displaying "desktop" webpages rather than "mobile" webpages you are streaming video data with every ad in motion and flash display. If you are connecting your phone to a laptop you are streaming even more and not realizing it.

Bottom line is does it matter? Are you being charged extra for this or are you using up high speed bandwidth to a level that you will be throttled by Verizon to a slow internet speed on the phones? If not, it should not really matter if you use x% of data on video.
Gene_Ginny
Explorer
Mar 15, 2015
I see more and more website pages with embedded video, particularly news sites. I constantly see black boxes with text saying "you need to upgrade flash to properly experience this website". I have active-x and flash disabled intentionally. I would not be surprised if 1/3 or more of the content on pages you see is video.