Over (mobile) data consumption

Over the past months, some users have encountered and reported surge in data consumption using /e/OS, which can be very problematic when using mobile data plans.

We have identified an issue that in some cases is leading to overconsumption of data when eDrive is working and synchronizing data between 1 or more /e/ device and ecloud.global.

Scenario: a picture is taken, which makes Android generate a thumbnail, that is also added to a local DB file like “.thumbdata4-something”

In some cases, a known bug in Android makes this DB file grow a lot over time. In my case, I have two such files approx 700MB.

Each time a picture is taken and getting synchronized to ecloud.global, the 700MB file is slightly modified with the new thumbnail, and therefore pushed to the cloud server.

The thumbnail directory is located at:

/sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails/

eDrive normally has a filter to avoir thumbnails to be synced. However, if for some reasons, this directory has been synchronized once, all its content will be synced by eDrive at each new synchronization.

“Historical users” had this directory synchronized before the eDrive filter was put in place.

Some new users seem to have a similar issue, but we are not sure it’s the same exact problem and why that would happen in this case.

So here are some possible workarounds and future solutions:

1- delete manually .thumbdata files locally or at https://ecloud.global/apps/files/?dir=/Photos/.thumbnails

This should fix the problem until the new DB file grows up again.

2- possibly: change perms of /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails/ in read only mode. Like;

chmod 0400 /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails/.thumbdata-something

This should only slow down a bit the gallery app.

3- We will add add a new test in eDrive service so that it will blacklist synchronization of all those DB files

Please report your case, if that fixes or not over consumption of data when new pictures/screenshots are taken. (Note: synchronization can be “forced” by putting the device OS background mode, pressing once the power button).

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I had the issue before and it just came back the other night, I think. Phone was running hot and discharging over night without being used. Noticed data being used up by OS for no obvious reason. I turned off sync which seemed to fix it temporarily until I got back and could look this up. Just deleted thumbdata, there were 4 of them. They didn’t seem to be that huge. We’ll see if this does the trick.

One thing that’s unclear to me: Like last time I still have background data turned off as well as syncing over data, at least in any place that I’ve found. How is it that this still happens?

Hi, I had this problem: about 5 days ago my data plan was full, and I discovered that 20 gb where used by Edrive (screenshot attached) (I don’t understand how is this possible if I only have 5 gb in Edrive and are not full).
I tried Gaels solution n1, but I couldn’t find any thumbnail files reproduced. The only thing I found was a blank picture uploaded 30 times, but it was 1.000 kb, so I don’t think that was the cause of the 20 gb data consumption.
I also tried solution 2, but can’t find the permisions of SDCard.

Hope you can help me avoid ths problem in the future, because I don’t have wifi at home and mobile data is the only possiblity i have to work from home.

Regards

I have this issue too. It only stopped when I switched off mobile data.

I don’t have a Photos folder, so https://ecloud.global/apps/files/?dir=/Photos/.thumbnails doesn’t take me anywhere.

The alert text is “/e/ Drive has used more data than usual”.

Are you using thr Seedvault backup?
When i was running Lineage i would backup to my personel Nextcloud instance, only to discover that such backups didnt differentiate between mobile data and wifi. This created the issue you describe.

I just ran into this issue, using an FP3+ running /e/OS 0.22-20220228166119.

As you can see on the screenshot, 15Go out of my 20Go mobile data plan were used by /e/ Drive.
I don’t understand how this is possible as I only have a 1GB ecloud.global account…

And my mobile operator confirms that this data has been used, it is not the phone that is wrongly reporting data use.

What I can say is that:

  • a few months ago I tried to use the default /e/ Drive synchronisation to backup pictures to my ecloud account
  • since it did not work properly I stopped this and instead I use the Nextcloud app InstantUpload feature to do that, but everything is set up to use Wifi only

I just turned off mobile data because it keeps consuming it… 2 more Go since yesterday…

I will try out solutions described previously and report back if needed.

Edit

I can add that in /e/ account settings, the sync of “Pictures and videos” was activated (I don’t know if I forgot to deactivate it a long time ago…) and it showed a “last sync” from todays date.
So I deactivated “Pictures and videos” sync.

Also in the Account extra settings > user@e.email sync settings, “Sync using wifi only” was not activated.
I activated it and will see if this data consumption goes away.

But I still don’t understand where does this data goes…

Edit 2

Since these deactivation the data consumption has stopped.

I had a mysterious mobile data peek some days ago I can’t explain, especially because I was (as every day) almost the entire time in a wifi environment.

The peek is 262 MB. I never had that before.

I reported this issue yesterday in this thread Highly Alarming Activity - /e/ Drive Uploading Data Somewhere According to my Network's Activity, but E cloud doesn't show anything before finding this thread today.

It is really odd. After seeing my phone quickly going through heaps of mobile data yesterday, I decided to connect it to my wifi network so I could see the device usage on my router’s admin interface, and indeed it showed my phone uploading intensively. As soon as I toggled off network access for the /e/Drive app on my phone the uploading suddenly stopped.

I have studied some Cyber Security, so whenever I see stuff like this to do with unusual uploads it gives me alarm bells that there is something suspicious going on. What raises the concern most for me which @raphm has also pointed out is I have a free 1GB E Cloud account, and yet there is actually nothing in e cloud when I log in to the ecloud.global website - only 10KB of 1GB used; and yet by the device uploading activity well over 3GB has been used up - so why the heavy upload data usage of this particular app? Is this normal, and is it even safe?

Hello ! I have the same kind of issue, with a nearly empty ecloud storage but GBs of data consumption by /e/ Drive. I just deactivated pictures and video sync (although no local picture or video were uploaded on ecloud, and there is apparently no thumbnail directory) and I’ll see how it goes…