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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.
If only we could make Google great again. They suck pretty hard now.
The sad thing is that 24 GB isn't even a lot of data. Averaged over a month, that would barely even be faster than dialup speeds. Can you imagine paying $385 a month for a month of dialup Internet service? That's crazy. Yet people end up with these sorts of crazy bills every time an app misbehaves, or an OS bug appears, or some jerk goes crazy with push notifications, or whatever.
Every time I see a story like this, it reminds me how badly the United States needs to have consumer protection laws governing ISPs with actual teeth. For example:
And so on. I guarantee if 5 GB Internet plans had to be advertised as "5 GB per month (15 kbps continuous)", there would be a lot more pressure on cell companies to not oversell their service so ridiculously, and a lot fewer plans that charge $10 per gigabyte (3 kbps continuous). Just saying.
If it downloaded 12 GB overnight, let's be generous and say in the span of 12 hours so it's 1 GB per hour, WTF was it actually downloading? There's no way text and images posted in that time span is going to add up to that much data, and just how many news videos would it take to use that much data?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I wish I could delete the useless google apps on my phone, but I think you'll find that deleting the app altogether is usually not an option at all.
It costs me a bit north of $100, and my connectivity was cut off by the mobile provider at a really bad time. Ouch.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Google is really good at delivering buggy software. I often have Google Play Services drain my battery, for example, and Google does not seem interested in addressing this issue. This happens when you roll out Beta software into the real world.
After all, the app downloads just gigabytes of fake news.
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.
One used to be able to swipe away stories already viewed or not cared about. That seems to have changed in the last few months.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'll just keep using Google News & Weather, which is better anyway.
oh wait
Verizon wrote this post
Google: The AI that is selecting stories is now so good that there is no need to swipe away stories.
Microsoft: QA of Windows patches is now so good that updates can be forced in Windows 10.
Don't turn off wifi at night. Why do that anyway? It doesn't conserve that much battery.
Be happy you don't live in Canada, where 12GB over your regular quota would mean losing your house.
#DeleteFacebook
Well, if I only cared about one aspect of a country and life, I'd definitely move there.
It's the providers that are certainly happy! With their stupid package of 5 to 15 minutes of internet per month... because this is the reality!
They offer high speed internet that are busted after few minutes at full speed... there is no chance to anyone to be able to detect this bug without busting.
Get a lawyer for $75 to a couple hundred bucks? You'll probably be laughed out of most lawyer's offices with such a tiny claim.
Google Play Services will similarly update bits and pieces via LTE when all updating mechanisms are disabled and set for Wifi only. I've caught Instant Apps resources to be the biggest offender.
...or does everyone hate the new Google News app as much as I do.
I used to use the 'News and Weather' app that came with the phone until recently, when that app went blank except for a notice that it was being replaced by Google News. So I switched. The two apps are pretty much the same thing, but there's something overly busy and overcrowded about Google News.
The old app just gave you lists of stories in various categories, and that was it. A little scrolling, and you had a sense of what was there, and what of that was new. The new one gives you groups of stories within the lists - which are also much longer, including lots of stuff I've already seen. Plus my 'favorite' categories are not on the main screen with everything else. The whole thing makes for a clumsier experience, curated I assume, but hell if I know by what criteria.. Guessing it's some 'chosen just for you by our fabulous AI bots'. Well, no thanks.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...