1565475 - firefox uses huge amounts of mobile data

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Julian Sikorski]

Attachment: Screenshot_20190712-072408[1].png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

I was using mobile firefox as usual, visiting the usual websites (m.facebook.com, welt.de). Nothing out of the ordinary.

Actual results:

Firefox has managed to burn through almost 2 GB of mobile data in 12 days. This has never happened before.

Expected results:

Firefox data usage should have stayed reasonable, I only got over 3 GB of monthly data allowance twice in 18 months now and it was never due to firefox.

Comment 1

[Julian Sikorski]

Attachment: Detailed firefox data usage

I understand that the bug report is quite vague as of now. Is there a way to figure out which websites firefox was connecting to, or to otherwise get more information? Thank you!

Comment 2

[Julian Sikorski]

I checked the data usage for previous months:
June: 1,14 GB foreground, 120 MB background, 1,26 GB total
May: 672 GB foreground, 57 MB background, 672 MB total
April: 0,93 GB foreground, 39 MB background, 0,97 GB total

So there are two issues it seems: background data usage being an order of magnitude higher than usual, and foreground data usage being three to four times higher than usual.

Comment 3

[Julian Sikorski]

Firefox just went through approx 400 MB of data in a couple minutes. I had two tabs open and the phone was lying on the desk:

https://www.welt.de/
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article196751771/Amazon-veraendert-mit-Retouren-Erleichterungen-den-Markt.html

Can it be that the videos are being downloaded in full despite autoplay being disabled? This could explain the data drain.

Comment 5

[Julian Sikorski]

Given the amount of data downloaded, I don't think images or fonts are to blame. I am quite convinced that videos are the culprit.
I do have autoplay set to block, but it appears that this option only blocks playing of the videos but not downloading them. If welt.de had a brilliant idea of littering their mobile page with videos, this could definitely explain the data drain. The article about amazon has 4 videos in it.
As my data allowance actually ran out, I had to re-activate an old prepaid sim card. I will attempt to test my theory by using mobile firefox with and without welt.de and monitoring the data usage closely.

Comment 8

[Andy]

I'd like to port some information from bug 1566440 here:

My Firefox has been using 1,15 GB of background data in one or two hours on one occasion, and 600 MB of background data on another. In the case with the higher data usage no tabs were open whatsoever, and no service workers installed.

Similarly, reporter of a question in the support forum reported 5–8 GB in 20 minutes (which is plausible on 4G).

I guess we can rule out Firefox Sync, it should never sync that much data, right?

Comment 9

[Julian Sikorski]

I have been avoiding welt.de for the last couple days and firefox only transferred 55 MB of data. I will keep monitoring the situation and re-visit welt.de closer to the end of the monthly cycle in case the test goes wrong and burns through all my remaining data.
Having said that, it does indeed appear that the poorly designed mobile page of welt.de might be to blame.

Comment 10

[Dirk Ambras]

I have been avoiding welt.de for the last couple days
(ported information from bug 1564315) I downgraded to Firefix v64 and welt.de works fine again. I assume that welt.de just reveals the issue.

Comment 11

[Dirk Ambras]

I do not use Firefox Sync but experienced the same data traffic.

Comment 12

[Stefan Deiac]

Hello, I tried to investigate this issue using the welt.de site for a long time. For now, I tested the site using the Wifi service and after more than 20h those are my findings:

• Using Google Pixel 3 (Android 9) the usage data was ~ 100Mb;
• Using LG G7 fit (Android 8.1) the usage data was ~ 150Mb;
• Nokia 6 (Android 7.1.1) the usage data was ~ 900Mb;

The scenarios tried was:

• Using the site for a couple of hours(browsing on the site, watching some posts, playing some videos);
• Using the Browser while the site was opened on a different tab;
• Let the browser with the site on the background(also, let the phone opened on the night with the site opened);
• Using other apps while the browser with the site was on background;

From my investigation, I see that the site have a notification about the running of audio from the main page of welt.de on all scenarios presented above. In my opinion, is that the site runs that information in the background anytime when you use their site(what would make the app to use more data than normal).
Also, I found a similar bug filed some times ago who is investigating the same behavior. On bug 1273552 you'll found more information and investigation about this problem.

Comment 13

[Andy]

Great work Stefan, thanks so much for your effort!

Your mention of the playback notification makes me realise that I often have that notification still in the tray when the corresponding tab has been closed for a long time! Finally I have to kill Firefox to get rid of that notification. This doesn't apply for my 1,15 GB background data case, though.

Could that sticky notification be related to data still being transferred somewhere in the background?

I'm on Android 6.0.1 btw.

Comment 14

[Dirk Ambras]

Thanks Stefan for your efforts!

But my experiences were different: I was on a ship at lake constance on June 14th. During few minutes, this FF67 consumed 254 MB although I did NOT watch any video, and I have no logins, no sync, but activated ad blocker. Unfortunately my mobile switched to a Swiss network which caused me costs of almost 60 €. After complaining to my network operator they lowered to 40 €. I just tell to highlight that there is really an issue.

After that experience I took a closer look at the network consumption, I disabled background data, FF notifications, save data, and perhaps others, and changed to uBlock Origin. Nonetheless, in one day around June 25th FF67 consumed 1 GB. Beginning of July I decided to downgrade to FF64 because my daily use does not enable me at all to stay within my 2 GB monthly limit.

Cheers
Dirk

Comment 15

[Eliza Balazs]

Hi!
This behavior was investigated in Comment 12, and even if there is Bug 1273552 already filed on a similar case, I will mark this as NEW because it seems to me that is a more recent issue and there are several users complaining about it. Thanks!

Comment 16

[Stefan Arentz | :st3fan | ⏰ EST | he/him]

Can it be that the videos are being downloaded in full despite autoplay being disabled? This could explain the data drain.

A quick check with 68.0.2 on the welt.de pages shows that the autoplay preference is followed (the video does not auto play) and that no data is being downloaded until the video is being interacted with. The page adds up to a little more than 5MB and when the video is played that adds another 12MB to the data being downloaded.

I think we need a bit more evidence that Firefox is using data that is unaccounted for before we make this bug actionable.

Could this be an add-on?

Comment 17

[Michiel Dethmers]

Attachment: 20190915_094344.png

FF For Android 68.1 on a Samsung Galaxy S7

I have loads of Tabs open, but I have that all the time and this never happens. So, I don't think it's the tabs or any sites.

I think my issues is more related to bug 1273552 but I'm not allowed to comment there, so I'll post it here instead, as it's related.

Comment 18

[Michiel Dethmers]

Attachment: Screenshot_20190915-103903.png

Comment 19

[Julian Sikorski]

Attachment: Same issue happening with Firefox Preview

This seems to be happening with Firefox Preview as well

Comment 20

[Julian Sikorski]

Attachment: Welt.de burning through data

As Firefox Preview seems to be affected too, it appears that welt.de is doing something which results in a lot of data being used up.
Please have a look at the screenshot: the media icon is show in the top left corner as if media were being played, but in fact there is nothing being played back. The presence of this icon seems to relate to excessive data usage. The issue does not happen every time which makes it hard to pinpoint. If you browse welt.de for long enough it will happen eventually.
I'm on Android 7.0 and Moto X Force.

Comment 21

[Andy]

Since you're bringing the icon up again, I'd like to repeat my comment far above:

[…] I often have that notification still in the tray when the corresponding tab has been closed for a long time! Finally I have to kill Firefox to get rid of that notification.
[…]
Could that sticky notification be related to data still being transferred somewhere in the background?

Comment 22

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Catch all bugs for these sorts of issues are not useful. To keep from more people adding unrelated instances of data usage I am going to lock this to editbug users. Bugs are most useful when they deal with a specific instance of a problem.

If you have come to this bug because of data usage in Firefox for Android please file a new bug or Firefox Preview {GeckoView} with your best recollection of what you did (what sites were open) before this occurred.

Comment 23

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.