How do I avoid data charges when sending/receiving pictures?

[SaytaSora]

I have a Samsung Galaxy s4 phone and use koodo mobile. I literally never use data, only wifi, but occasionally I send and receive picture messages which requires a data connection so I switch mobile data on to receive/send the picture then turn it immidiately back off but in that time my phone starts doing Internet things (like checks to see if I have updates, Facebook notifications, emails, etc) and uses my data plan. My koodo plan automatically charges me $5 once I use data so I'm trying to avoid getting charged $5 for literally 1mb or less. There used to be an add-on with koodo to stop data usage and also a way to be charged by mb but those features are not offered anymore. So does anyone know any settings I can change on my phone that stop it from doing things online the second mobile data is turned on?

 

[anon(632115)]

Switch off sync on accounts such as email etc, use Playstore settings to update over wifi only. Disable notifications on FB etc or use email on wifi which is a lot easier

 

[hallux]

Some messaging apps allow you to set them to not automatically download images on MMS messages (usually ones with pictures or videos). You can do this to prevent downloading images while on mobile data and wait until you're on WiFi to download it (if it will download on WiFi). I'm not sure if receiving the notification itself results in a data charge.

 

[SaytaSora]

All of my accounts have sync disabled and Google play is restricted to wifi. I also went through the mobile network list and set restricted on everything on the list but they still use background data regardless (just less of it, it seems). I was hoping there was a universal way to stop everything from connecting to the Internet while not on wifi since Internet mobile data and sms are different things

 

[SaytaSora]

I need to send pictures of things at work sometimes so I can't always wait until I'm on wifi. The actual picture messages don't charge me anything: it's just all the apps using background data

 

[SaytaSora]

So I just found this and followed what it said https ://community.koodomobile .com/koodo/topics/change_apn_to_disable_internet_while_enabling_mms_on_samsung_ace_2?topic-reply-list[settings][page]=1#topic-reply-list
But "Android OS" leaked through using background data and there's no settings to restrict it. What was it even doing?