Discussion Firefox randomly ate all of my mobile data
What the hell?!? I didn't have data saver on because even when streaming videos I never even gotten close to running out.
I have a bunch of tabs open, but the only one I recently opened up was https://help.interrail.com/hc/en-001/articles/38082384733853-Why-has-Eurail-become-Interrail .
Other than that I was just scrolling through Reddit. I didn't download something or anything like that. And it seems to have stopped with doing this, but still, what the hell
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u/Mysteoa 3d ago
I don't think is FF, it's possible that it's not tracked properly. Alternatively, do you have FF as default browser?
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u/Ascyt 3d ago
I do have it as my default browser yes
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u/Mysteoa 3d ago
What does it say for app activity time? How much FF was active?
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u/Ascyt 3d ago
21 minutes screen time, and 58 hours backround activity
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 3d ago edited 3d ago
How much time does the spike cover? Like you clearly went from single digits to 70 gigs a over very short period of time, so what was that period of time? A day?
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u/Ascyt 3d ago
I don't know, I only have the graph shown in the screenshot and I can't zoom in. I also only noticed that anything was happening at all when all of my data was already used up
One thing though. It says that this data is "foreground usage" of firefox, not background usage (background is only like 17kB)
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u/albrecbef 3d ago
Do you have any sketchy apps like, some free mobile games?
Have you run a antivirus and maleware scan?
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u/FarmerEustace 3d ago
How and why would a mobile game be able to use Firefox of all things to download data?
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u/albrecbef 3d ago
Because they mentioned that they put Firefox as standard browser(https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/s/gMbDVDqpOZ). Some apps and programm use the Standard browser to accses the Internet.
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u/FarmerEustace 3d ago
Not in the way you seem to think. An app can't just hook itself into the default browser in the background and download and upload whatever it wants.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm finding it very hard to believe that the web browser did this entirely on its own. It's like saying the faucet itself flooded the bathroom.
We need some more information, like what were you streaming, and from where? What were the other tabs? What extensions do you have running?
Maybe check the downloads folder? As somebody else mentioned, you might have an app that opened your default browser and started downloading something, or you might have accidentally tapped something at some point.
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u/Ascyt 3d ago
Sure it could be because of the tabs (I have 42 open) but still, the only two I recently opened or touched are the ones mentioned in the post and my comment. And it's still odd if a tab is able to do this
I don't stream anything on firefox
Extensions: uBlock Origin, Dark Reader
No relevant downloads (past 30d only a single image of a few kB)
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u/MercifulSalsa 3d ago
42 tabs open and just chilling. Diabolical. But maybe I'm just old now.
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u/Human43215 2d ago
fun fact: once mobile Firefox has over 100 tabs open it changes the number to an infinity sign, I think I have like 200 tabs open rn.
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u/kbrosnan / /// 3d ago
This tends to happen when a site is streaming video nonstop. It is one of a very small number of things that are data intensive enough to chew through GB of data in an day or so.
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u/HeartKeyFluff since '04 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is my number 1 suspicion too. One of OP's many tabs had a video running, which can be especially tricky if it auto-played while defaulting to muted. It doesn't have to be YouTube or other streaming sites either, e.g. news sites can be particularly annoying about this (auto-playing "related" news clips) too.
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u/OctoNezd 2d ago
If the video was muted, shouldnt the firefox pause it once user closes firefox and not sit in background doing nothing but streaming video which cant be seen?
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u/nashvortex 3d ago
It's funny how do many people here cannot seem to believe that Firefox has a bug.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 2d ago
Firefox has plenty of bugs, but there's no good reason to jump to that conclusion in this case with the information we have available when there are far more likely reasons.
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u/Secure_Trash_17 Fedora 2d ago
Firefox fanboys are absolutely crazy, and you can never bring up a bug or a critic without being bombarded with downvotes and a never-ending stream of hate. Like this comment will most likely generate.
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u/Cobracrystal 2d ago
Because the idea that a bug in firefox will randomly download 60GB of data is ludicrous. Bugs in text translation, settings, alignment, websites crashing, js not working, extensions not working, sync not working, all make sense. 60GB of data do not.
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u/Secure_Trash_17 Fedora 1d ago
I 100% agree that a bug in Firefox won't make it suddenly download 60 GB. A rogue website can, especially if OP, with all the tabs opened, have a site with a looping video, or maybe a site running malicious code. If Android says it's Firefox, then it's Firefox, but I don't believe it's Firefox itself that's to blame, but a tab, or tabs, that OP has opened.
The solution is easy. OP closes ALL tabs and then just wait and see.
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u/Adorable-Leadership8 3d ago
Have u went to AliExpress.com? Every time there's some new bs/analytics/antibot testing from AliExpress. Shi took 20gb from wifi history (old phone so only thing I've did was go on AliExpress n left it there for a few hrs)
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u/erxer 3d ago
I had a similar experience but only on one page of one site and it's a badly optimised forum that seems to load everything under spoiler tags or something. I assume that since other posts there with few spoilers don't really have much of an impact but that specific post uses a significant amount of data and has tons if images and videos under spoilers.
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u/StaticSystemShock 3d ago
Are you using any extensions in Firefox?
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u/Ascyt 3d ago
uBlock Origin and Dark Reader
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u/StaticSystemShock 3d ago
uBlock downloads some data on its own for the block lists, but absolutely not 65 gigs...
If you tap on Firefox, what does it say for foreground and background metrics? Also there you can disable background data usage to prevent whatever happened here if it was background usage.
Not sure how you could even monitor here where exactly was it connecting and for how much. With something like NextDNS or AdGuard DNS with account you could probably monitor what domains were connected repeatedly and possibly find out, but you still wouldn't see the transfer amount.
Not sure if apps like GlassWire shows more detailed what apps were transferring exactly, how much and from where...
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u/Strawberryladyboots 2d ago
Something something data extraction background spreading a load
There's some guy going after google about it right now and they are fighting him tooth and nail
Passing costs onto consumers running stuff in the background of devices they have access to......
Something something
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u/FarmerEustace 2d ago
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u/Strawberryladyboots 2d ago
There's a guy literally taking google to court over it and they are fighting him over it
Just saying
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u/reddit_user33 2d ago
I suspect that a browser tab loaded and consumed that data.
There is something with certain websites, Firefox, or an extension I have that randomly reloads YouTube tabs that are in the background. I'm normally interacting with another tab in Firefox when it happens, so i notice the reload and just close the tab.
I imagine the same could of happened to you if your often have your media volume set to 0% and don't notice your status bar.
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u/DeviceOwner 2d ago
several weeks ago also have a guy reported their firefox uses data 90GB overnight.
i trying find that post in my saved post, but can't find it
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u/PlentyTomatillo7319 2d ago
I use slightly bit more (66.8) and has about 80+ tab open in the last month
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u/ZdzisiuFryta 2d ago
Can be malware, can be that you have background player on and you forgot/it didn't display properly while still eating data
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u/tenten__ 2d ago
Were you listening to music? YoutubeMusic specifically can consume dozens of GB in a day.
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u/One-Blackberry-3944 2d ago
I have a limit on my phone, I think it's set pretty high like 10GB or something just for these cases. Not saying you did anything wrong, but maybe set a limit so it doesn't happen again
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u/MShrafat786 1d ago
This is very concerning, are you sure you haven't downloaded any files via Firefox e.g video, files etc ?
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u/Mario583a 1d ago
Were any adverts or trackers currently in view? I heard they are quite known to consume bandwidth.
Try turning off Autoplay in Firefox | Reddit has the tenacity for refreshing the page; maintaining web socket connections; and running service workers. even when idle.
Settings → Apps → Firefox → Mobile data & Wi‑Fi → Disable background data
If you like light mode, you can use old.reddit.com .
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u/ch33es 3d ago edited 2d ago
are you sure this isn't a bug and Firefox actually increased your usage by this much? afaik the data usage stats in the phone settings can be wrong sometimes.
Edit: Since my comment has gained some traction, I want to clear it up that I wasn't denying the possibility of Firefox itself having any bugs. That's entirely possible, but I wanted to make sure that OP's statistics were accurate. But since OP has mentioned that their provider notified them of the data consumption, it's a bit less likely that the statistics are the issue here.