I'm no expert but I would have to think that something is running to be sending data like that.

 

My wife had the same issue 5.2 GB in 3 days, normally it would take her 3 months to use that much data! After we got the text from AT&T that they were going to throttle here data, I backed up all apps, sms, sdcards and e-mail and did a factory, twice, formatting the internal card each time as well for good measure. Only reinstalled apps from the Play Store and the data useage went back to normal.

One thing you can try is install 3G watch dog pro, it ill watch what apps use data and how much they use it. I wish I could have installed it before I reset the phone because now I will never know what happened.

If you do install 3G watch dog pro and find what app it is, please let me know

 

Porn .............I'm just saying.

 

Just found an app called My Data Manager it is free and monitors each app's data usage. If you have not already cleared the phone, install it and see what app is using the data

 

Check out this article: Bill Shock: Wireless Usage Alerts for Consumers | FCC.gov

 

I'd go to an ATT store and have them change your SIM card. I had a customer once who averaged 200MB or less of data with an iPhone and one day out of nowhere she started getting data usage alerts upwards of 3GB in a few days. I had no idea what it could be as she barely had any apps and it didn't match her previous usage patterns.

THe only thing I could think of was changing her SIM as maybe it was faulty and was sending incorrect usage info back to ATT. The lady never came back so I'm ASSUMING it fixed the issues. I can't be sure it worked but its worth a try.

 

Same problem here, Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. We got four of them. My brother had this problem immediately after getting his. The only remedy for him was to switch out the phone. Fortunately for him, he was within the 30 days. His phone was sucking huge amounts of data while he was sleeping.
Now mine just started doing it. I got the text message from ATT that I have used 90 percent of my data, just seven days into the new cycle. All of the last nine months, I haven't even used half of my available 2 gigs.
ATT told me I used over 1 gig at 10:30 AM, while I was driving to an 11:00 AM job. There is something strange going on. I have not downloaded anything new, nor have I changed the way I use my phone in any way. It is set up to use the wi fi while at home.
This is crazy! ATT sure has to be aware that there is a problem. They were very nice and promised to take care of it, but that is unfair that now I am going to have to be super careful, unless I can get rid of this data hog.

 

Hey Random Hero,
Do you think it matters what email you have?
I have gmail and comcast on my phone, but always have, so I don't know why it would be a problem now and not before.

 

I had that same problem with my 2nd SR AT&T sent me a new phone, used 5GB of data in 3 days. Maybe your wife got my old SR ...

 

Are both of you still on Gingerbread or have you upgraded to ICS?

 

Upgraded to ICS.

 

thank you, I would have thought ICS would fix this. I can say, since I did the factory reset on my wife's phone, she has yet to have this happen again. It looks like no matter what data plan you have, you need to watch your data usage with this phone

 

Posted twice, don't know why.

 

No, I haven't been able to figure out how to switch to ICS.
After adding the 3 G watchdog, thank you for figuring that out, it is limiting what my email can do when it is not on WIFI. Now, my usage is back to normal, but only because I chose background data restricted to WIFI. IF I take that off, it goes right back to sucking data at extremely large amounts in very short periods of time. Like I drive to the store and it sits in my purse, and uses 1/2-1 whole gig. That is half of the two I have for the entire month.
I am over 3 now, but staying close to that. I don't even want to think of what it would have been without the block the 3G watchdog put on it. I just don't think I should have to block my email when I am not home, kind of a bummer.

 

I had the same issue. Purchased a skyrocket s2, and added 1 Gmail account and 2 yahoo accounts using pop3. (Standard default when adding email to be pushed into phone). After about 2 months, started eating data like crazy, kept getting texts saying I hit my limit, then hit my overage, ect. A quick solution was to deactivate the data. ( go into settings, wireless and internet, scroll to bottom to mobile net work and un-check "use packet data". Would just activate packet data when I really needed to use the internet, or see if I had mail. After a month of this, I called sprint, and they couldn't help. Went online, and found out it has to do with a.glitch in the gingerbread operating system
So, I downloaded "my data tracker" or something like that, and figured out it was from the email.
So here's what I figured out. One solution is to Change from using pop3 to Inappropriate. Go into your email, click the more options/ list looking button, and go onto.account settings if I remener correctly. Switch from pop3 to imap. I didn't like this option.
What's happening is that with a Gmail account, you can set incoming data settings and outing setting. (On a seperate note, Gmail is the way to go if you want emails updated quick.) On yahoo, you can only mess.with the incoming settings. If you have it the outing settings set to "copy emails to server" or something like that, it makes a copy of every email ever sent to your PHONE, regardless if you delete them on the phone or computer. When Gmail checks for new mail, it keeps sending the accumulated deleted and undeleted messages back to the phone eating the data, ergo, you might not of had any issues when you first got the phone, but it gets steadily worse as you get emails, and think there deleted for.good.
I had to delete all 3 email addressable from phone, and put em back on to figure this out. When I reloaded my Gmail, I went into account setting for Gmail, and made it so that it did not save the emails on the server.(set it to"delete emails from server when deleting" or something like that. Then I opened my Gmail, and there was an option to "load emails", so I clicked it, and goulash, every email my phone ever got came back and I deleted em for good. Had to keep clicking "load emails" a lot to get em all.

After that, things have been kosher. Means you have to delete you gotta delete your emails a lot.

Hope this saves some people from some hair pulling

 

Since someone else bumped this thread, so I might as well put in my two cents...

I found an app called "Onavo Data counter." You tell the app your data limit for the month, it keeps a percentage track in the status bar. It also warns you about data hog apps (youtube, dailymotion, etc.) and lets you restrict them to wi-fi only. If something suddenly starts gobbling up data, it also sends you a warning instantly. Much better than the stock warnings from your service provider.

Since I got it, I've not gone over my sparing 500 MB data cap!

 

Most of the data "leakage" it is thanks to various apps running - some in the background - that constantly have the "need" to connect to the internet for 1001 reasons. Widgets also connect to the internet... but one easy and efficient way of being in control is by turning off the "Background data". It may be hard to believe but I`m getting away with less than 200Mb of data usage in a month.

 

Good idea, but I don't think that would help because the issue for most of us was that the e-mail app went wonky. Besides, if you install My Data Manager you can see exactly which app is using and how much data.

Besides, I have more data hungry apps on my phone that update every 15 minutes on my Galaxy Note and never had the issue my wife's Skyrocket had

 

The email is going haywire because the Background Data allows it to. Auto updates/downloads, check for emails every-so-often and keeping your phone "awake" are all thanks for the background data being on. The Data Manager will definetly help to norrow down your problem which app is sucking you dry of your data.

 

Never mind, found what I was looking for

 

If you've upgraded to ICS, there's no need to install a separate app to track data. A data tracker is built into the system settings of ICS on the Skyrocket, so you can see exactly what apps are using data, and exactly how much each app is using. Just go to settings, and "Data Usage" is the third option from the top, just below "Bluetooth".