I have looked all over the settings, but something is constantly polling up any available internet connection, activating it. Autodisconnect will bring it down again but I'm not happy about not being 100% in control of my device.

Weather widgets and other crap is removed. My POP e-mail should only update when being close to wlan, MfE is set to update only during the afternoons and not connect during night and office hours. OVI account has been disabled in the conversations application. I am not running any IM application.

I don't think there's much traffic being created but this still irritates me. Any ideas what could be causing this? The device should be fairly vanilla, PR1.2 is installed.

Had this been a Windows PC I would have suspected a virus but... yeah.

Is POP email set to Update Automatically?
Disable MFE just for testing and check.

Check what apps are running in the background using xterm probably with top command.

the device has been designed to be online 24/7.

what about HAM (app manager) checking updates?

In settings, just do Always Ask when connecting to the Internet.

Will that make MfE or other apps that need to connect to the internet freak out? (I also want fMMS to function without hassle)

This will also bring up a prompt every time I use the www. I don't want that.

So what you are saying is that it creates a live connection without any traffic? Pretty 'tarded for a mobile device IMHO.

IIRC the app manager only checks in the morning, or once a day. This occurs at all times.

Doubt it. When I go abroad, I always change it to Always Ask. And it never connects without me telling it to

Ok. Coming from a Symbian device (N97), it's very strange for me to see this behavior. My N97 was/is actually very consistent and predictable with regards to internet connectivity.

Settings > Internet Connections > Always Ask.

This will change the default behaviour of the phone so that it does not automatically search out a tether all the time. Instead, when you connect to the internet and want to go surfing it will ask you which connection type you want according to the local availability of GPRS, HSDPA or WLAN.

fMMS will not behave any differently, your phone will still recieve a push SMS which will automatically start up the MMS APN and tether it to the MMS provider's signal long enough to download the MMS.

I have mine configured like this because constant tethering to the nearest available connection used to fry my noodle too.

Hope this helps.

... I just hate it when that happens...