Remote Access? Samsung Note 4

[BobJones1889]

I am fearing that someone in my family is being able to have remote access to my phone. I am not the account administrator for my phone plan so I am unable to access any records. The person who I am suspicious of has been using a Samsung device for several years, however I just got my first one in January of this year. I have no idea how this could be possible but I have found apps being opened without me actually opening them, messages being deleted with me actually deleting them, pictures being moved around or deleted without me actually deleting them, and somehow they seem to know what I have been doing on my phone, even though I haven't seen them in person in a very long time. I thought that this could be because they may have rooted my device without me knowing, but when I checked to see if it was rooted, it was not. Is there anyway to figure out how they could possibly be doing this, and how to stop it?

Thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Is the phone logged into your own Google account, or is it a shared account? Or does anyone else know your Google login credentials?

When you say apps are opening, do you mean they're actually opening up on the screen, and running in the foreground? Or do you mean that you see apps in the Settings>Apps>Running menu that you didn't physically open yourself? If the latter, that's normal Android behavior--the system will open apps automatically to fill RAM to a certain level.

 

[BobJones1889]

The apps are opening and running in the foreground.

 

[lagunarad]

The apps are opening and running in the foreground.

Now that's a bit scary.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[muzzy996]

IMO it could be a virus, malware or as you suspect some kind of remote connection issue.

One way to be sure would be to do a factory reset and use a completely new set of Google credentials to set up the phone. At that point the phone would be clean and not associated with any other Google account so there shouldn't be any external influence.

 

[B. Diddy]

Agree with factory reset. Before you use a different Google account, though, you could try doing the factory reset and then preventing anything from restoring or reinstalling automatically. Prior to the reset, go to Settings>Backup & Reset, and uncheck Automatically Restore. Then do the factory reset. After finishing the Setup Wizard, go immediately to Google Play Store and stop any app from automatically installing. Now start installing apps one by one, and seeing if that behavior returns. You should be able to update all Google apps at once--no need to do that one by one.