If you're a Windows Phone user and your data usage has alarmingly increased during the last few days, it's likely that the cause is a Twitter-related feature.
Windows Phone devices are re-downloading profile images for Twitter contacts frequently, according to a
report by The Verge. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem is caused due to a Twitter back-end change where the social network is migrating profile pictures from one server to another.
The report iterates that on one of the Windows Phone devices it was using, it found the People hub, the section that essentially contains the phone's built-in Twitter client, used more than 300MB of mobile data and more than 3GB of Wi-Fi data in less than a week. The high data consumption takes place even if the user doesn't use the People hub section of Windows Phone, though the amount of data consumed will depend on the number of Twitter contacts users have, in the People hub, the report notes.
The issue would greatly affect most 3G users as data plans are mostly capped by mobile operators, leading to users finishing up their quota at a much faster rate, and thereafter pay extra.
Microsoft has confirmed that it is working to resolve the issue but it's exactly not in its hands, as the change is from Twitter's side. The report adds that Microsoft has now made a change so that Twitter accounts are synced only once a day to reduce the data consumption. Users can also remove a Twitter account from their Windows Phone devices to avoid the excessive consumption of data till Twitter completes server migration in the coming weeks. Windows Phone users can track data use through the Data Sense app if it's been enabled.