Slashdot Mirror
Google News App Bug Is Using Up Gigabytes of Background Data Without Users' Knowledge (theverge.com)
A bug in the Google News app for Android is reportedly causing the app to use up excessive amounts of background data, leading to overage charges. "According to dozens of posts on the Google News Help Forum, users have been experiencing this issue as early as June," reports The Verge. "The issue was verified and addressed by a Google News community manager in September, stating that the company was investigating and working toward a fix, but the issue is still ongoing." From the report: Verge reader Zach Dowdle emailed in with his experience, and screenshots of his app and Wi-Fi data usage: "The Google News app is randomly using a ridiculous amount of background data without users' knowledge. The app burned through over 12 gigs of data on my phone while I slept and my Wi-Fi had disconnected. It lead to $75 in overage charges."
According to several users, the app burned through mobile data despite having "Download via Wi-Fi" turned on in the settings. In some extreme cases, the Google News app used up to 24GB of data, leading to overage charges of up to $385, users reported. So far, the only solutions seem to be disabling background data, and deleting the app altogether.
According to several users, the app burned through mobile data despite having "Download via Wi-Fi" turned on in the settings. In some extreme cases, the Google News app used up to 24GB of data, leading to overage charges of up to $385, users reported. So far, the only solutions seem to be disabling background data, and deleting the app altogether.
Why do you need an app. I have one app on my phone - it's called a browser. It can go to any of the sites I need. The last thing I need to do is download piles of identical WebView wrappers for websites when a single browser app does 99% of what I need.
Being of the generation who started using computers when every 'bit' mattered, I still use modern technology in the same way.
I frequently cleanup and delete stuff I do not foresee needing (after taking multiple backups to offline media of course), I always turn off mobile data when I am connected to wifi or when I will not require it, I even turn off wifi on my phones and tablets when not in use to save the battery, such as at night or when driving.
Such habits allow my devices to run for longer without a recharge when out and about plus it seems, have saved me countless well earned £££ by not becoming one of the people impacted by this software bug and others we may not know about.
Unfortunately today, most people would not even dream of turning off data when not actively using it, as they may miss a Facebook post of their mate making a cuppa.
When I attended college, 100MB (not Gigabytes, Megabytes) of storage served me perfectly well for 3 years as I had gotten used to formatting my digital photos and scans to acceptable quality and filesizes due to having grown up with 1.44MB 3.5 inch floppy disks.
By the time I worked in the IT department at the same college 4 years later, students would arrive at the support department door in an endless stream on day 1 of their course, complaining that they have run out of space, having only saved 1 digital photo (why did their tutors not educate them on file size reduction? Don't get me started on the state of teaching!). Often they and their tutors demanded 100GB of storage space so they could save their photos and scans, which were to be used in Microsoft Word documents and presented on printed page at the size of a postage stamp, even though the saved file size would if laid out flat could easily be seen from space.
What I am getting at here is that having grown up in the age of 'digital rationing', I had to learn how to manage my storage space/bandwidth cost effectively and with the end product in mind.
Nowadays, people feel they don't have to bother, most probably don't even know that they can reduce the size of a photo taken by their digital camera or post process it in the GIMP or whatever to reduce the physical and file size. After all, they have a huge hard drive and cloud storage.
Learning how to manage the space/bandwidth as effectively as they would a physical filing cabinet, would go a long way to reducing the risk they are exposed to from such Google bugs.