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Excess data useage

  • 10 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 11 views
  • Last reply by shopping12

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My Pixel 3 went through 3.36GB of (foreground) data in basically a single session (approx duration 3-4 hours- a car ride to and from a one hour no-phone meeting), *while not being used* (but being off home wifi, i.e. data connection for the phone was cellular). Firefox for Android 68.11.0 Android 10.

ATT's logs indicate this is accurate (i.e. they report the usage too, it's not just the device).

This has never happened before. Another user on Twitter reported the same issue fwiw.

Any hints/fixes?

My Pixel 3 went through 3.36GB of (foreground) data in basically a single session (approx duration 3-4 hours- a car ride to and from a one hour no-phone meeting), *while not being used* (but being off home wifi, i.e. data connection for the phone was cellular). Firefox for Android 68.11.0 Android 10. ATT's logs indicate this is accurate (i.e. they report the usage too, it's not just the device). This has never happened before. Another user on Twitter reported the same issue fwiw. Any hints/fixes?

All Replies (10)

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Hi

What makes you believe that this is an issue with Firefox for Android?

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Thanks for the reply, because the phone said this was foreground use by the Firefox app.

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Hi

Did you have any tabs open in Firefox for Android?

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@Seburo - I was using the phone as normal, so probably yes.

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@Seburo but to be clear the app might or might not have been the "last used app" but it was not active in the foreground during this time

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The only thing that I can think would cause that would be if there was a video or a video-like ad on a tab that you had open at that time.

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That's what I wondered, but I am not clear what "background/foreground" means in that case. The phone was idle/blank screen for almost all this time, but it appears that the data was used by Firefox in the "foreground." I would have defined "foreground" as "active,visible app"

Is there a way of turning preventing firefox from using phone data (i.e. effectively disconnect it completely when not on wifi)? thnx!

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Hi

If you tap the right hand Android button on your device, you can see your open apps and select the ones that you wish to close.

I hope that this helps.

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Iphones allow you to restrict data access on an app by app basis (so you can, for example, set spotify to only work over wifi).

I don't know if that is something that needs to be enabled at the Android level, or if it is an app based control (in which case it is missing from Firefox and I'd argue is a <critical user money spending> bug)?