Two days ago, AT&T surprised me with three bandwidth warnings within a few seconds. In quick succession, our wireless account (i) exceeded 2/3 of the 300 MB limit, (ii) exceeded 90% of the 300 MB limit, and (iii) exceeded the limit, resulting in an excess bandwidth surcharge.
I isolated the culprit to one of our S3 minis. According to the onboard usage log, Google+ had unexpectedly burned 200 MB in background transfers. I guess that this was a transfer of a 200 MB video, because that S3 had just taken one.
Google+ came from AT&T preinstalled and preconfigured to automatically back up videos, but only when there is a WiFi connection available. I think this means a transfer should never have occurred over 4G.
I have found numerous forum threads – such as "Suddenly high data usage (Google+?)" over at AndroidCentral.com – in which identical experiences were reported, both in 2012 and 2013. Some of these threads implicate another app called Gallery, which also comes preinstalled and which I do not use and know nothing about. For more examples, Google [ android google+ sudden data usage ].
Is there a long-standing bug in Google+? How can I correct it going forward? Can I force Google+ to honor the WiFi-only setting? Do I need to change a setting in Gallery?
Can I expect to recover the surcharge from AT&T, considering that they were the ones to preinstall and preconfigure the software so that this could happen?
