Is it possible my SPV M700 connects to Internet automatically

[Guest sopo74]

Hi

I am new to the site and hope someone can help.

I have had my phone SPV M700 on orange for about a year with a free 5mb data connection bundle. I have never gone over this or if I have it has been very small. But in the last month my data usage has gone from approx 5mb to 17mb and hence my bill has leapt at least £30 just for data alone. As far as I am aware my internet surfing patterns have not changed. So I phoned Orange and they agreed to send me through the log of data transfer on my phone.

There are a lot of connections stated when I know I am not using the internet. about 50% of these are shown as 0mbs and the other 50% are showing connections of varying sizes. They are at 2 to 3 minute intervals. On a few days this activity spans over several hours adding a lot of money to my bill.

When I re-contacted Orange I was told in a particularly rude manner that I had used the Internet more over the past month. When I said I had not and said there where times stated on the log that I know I could not have been he just repeated that the phone does not connect on its own and go to different webpages (he assumed this as the data transfer size changes on each instance so was not refreshing 1 page over and over).

As I know I was not using the Internet at these times is there anything else my phone could be doing that would rachet up my data connection.

I have noticed that even though I close IE when I look at the phone later in the day it says it is connected to Orange GPRS for 4 hours. However in this 4 hours I have not used my phone so there should be no internet connection. This has been going on since I got the phone but the surge on the usage has only happened this month.

I'm sorry if this has been covered somewhere else and any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Guest Neil5459]

It is safe to assume thatyour device IS connecting to the internet for some purpose.

You don't have to initiate a connection yourself to be downloading data- some apps do it in the background. To help further we would need a complete list of all your installed apps, but the likely culprits for the sort of data use you are seeing would be either Email/Attachment downloads, or RSS/Newsreader downloads.

Have you changed email settings recently, or installed a Newsreader program?

[Guest sopo74]

Thanks for replying,

I don't have email set up on my phone, I just use the browser to check my email. I go to the easilymail website and log in to view. I do check my hotmail too and this does automatically go to my inbox when i go to hotmail.com through the browser.

To my knowledge I have not downloaded any software recently, I did download DocLock 11, months ago but it did not work.

When I spoke to Orange they said that there was have been a lot of connections in the past it's just as they were at 0 bytes. Something happened in the past month where whatever the phone connects to is larger.

I know I am grasping at straws but I was basically called a liar by the guy at Orange as he said that the phone does not connect without me.

Is there anywhere I can see a list of all programmes that do try and automatically connect?

Thanks

[Guest Neil5459]

It is difficult to see which apps are 'active' at any one time as some run as services in the background, so don't show in the Running Programs list.

Probably the safect thing you can do in the short term is to install MoDaCo NoData, which a small app that allows you to manually turn on/off the data connection. At least if you only connect at times you want, to download emails etc you can keep a log of when you were online or offline, and compare to any future data log Orange may send.

They are incorrect in saying the phone cannot connect without you initiating it- modern devices are designed to keep the data connection alive most of the time, so any processes needing data can access it.

You don't by any chance use a Satellite Navigation program do you- some of these will download traffic data, though most need a subscription. As it seems you are using about 1MB per day, it could be something like that.

With regard to the unwanted data charges- you can ask Orange to add the 'capped data' facility to your account. Won't stop the data use, but at least it caps the daily data charge to a maximum of £1. This is a 'free' add-on.

[Guest blewer]

Have a search for Paul's 'NoData' program. It can turn off your data connection and you can switch on again when wanting to use internet???

Not ideal, but could save you some costs

PS - program is free ;-)

[Guest sopo74]

Hi

Thank you both for pointing me in the direction of the software. I will def be downloading it.

I don't really use a great deal on my phone, I was intrigued when I got the phone that it could be used as a sat nav but decided I was better to use a dedicated sat nav, the screen was not really big enough.

I have now put a cap on my data connection so it will never go over £1.50 a day. Not great but with that and the NoData program this should put an end to what ever it is that is connecting without my knowledge and huge data charges.

It is also great to know that I am not going mad and the phone can connect and rack up a data connection without me doing anything.

Me thinks I will be making a written complaint to Orange about a particular customer service person. From what I have seen on here unfortunatly I am not the only one who has had bad service from them.

Thanks again

Sam

[Guest Neil5459]

Hope it sorts you out!

It's a sad fact that most CS personnel are poorly trained and just work from scripts. When you get a good one who actually knows something it's like a ray of light! WinMo queries are even less well understood ;)

If you only have a basic installation set, it might be worth trying a hard reset. This is the same as reformatting a PC, so you lose all user installed programs and files. If you take this route, then make sure to backup any improtant data like Contacts, Calendars etc, and user files in My Documents.

The 'easy' way to do a hard reset is to go into Settings/System and tap 'Clear Storage' then read the warnings, and proceed as instructed. This will revert the phone to the state it was in when you bought it. From there you can selectively install your needed applications, and keep an eye on data usage.

To look in detail at your actual data useage, I'd suggest intalling SpB GPRS Monitor, or Efficasoft GPRS Monitor. The SpB one can give you a minute/hour/day data analysis, but the Efficasoft one only gives a total data usage figure. They can be a little finnicky to set up, but worth it, and can soon recoup their cost in detecting unwanted usage.

[Guest monkeyb0y]

just a note....I had a similar thing and the tech guys suggested that it was maybe to do with connecting to my works PC - and the phone was trying to find an exchange server or saw some settings on our company network that prompted this..?

Then away from the company PC it would try to connect to the interent for some reason so i was instructed to delete the partnerships on the PDA - this i did and it stopped the fone trying to connect to the net.

I would sugest you may have a similar issue and be connecting to a PC on a network with an exchange server or something along them lines?

Monkeyboy