[Alanhd]

Particularly so to those of us who spent a decade doing just that with Win 95/98 and XP...

Those were the days. But win XP is still my favourite, even though win 10 boots blindingly fast.
Are there any threads on the site about apps to be cautious off.

[KPMcClave]

That sounds invalid, both as a premise and as an analogy.

A more accurate analogy would be something like this: there are demonic burglars in your house, you don't know where can't find them and neither can your friends or the police or even your priest. You know if you don't do something, they can not only take all your possessions, they can also infest the homes of all your associates and will spread like a plague. You have a button that restores your home to its primary state, free of demonic burglars, and all of your possessions will still be yours, but you'll have to spend five minutes telling the movers where to put everything and five minutes more facing your pictures and hanging up your clothes. Ten minutes later and with almost no effort you have a fully restored, demon free home without anything being destroyed, whether in a fire or otherwise.

Or something along those lines. Your hyperbole comes off a little strange.

You see, your example burning down your home would be analogous to throwing your phone on the ground and stomping the display into sand.

A factory reset is more in line with normal spring cleaning.

No, it's not.

There are two issues at play here. The first is the overall OS itself and Android's and OEMs' refusal to do better at making their stuff work without having to wipe everything and start over. Contrast that with Windows, for example. With whatever shortcomings any particular version of Windows has had, there have been plenty of ways to fix issues without having to install a clean version of the OS. As I said earlier, the Android and partners attitude has always seemed to be, "oh well, just FDR." That should be your last line of defense, not the default answer. I figure you know as well as I do that it is exactly the defualt answer too much of the time.

Because of that first issue, the trickle down to users and those of us trying to help each other out results in a fairly widespread sharing of the same "just do a FDR" advice. That's clear in this very thread, where a FDR was not at all needed to fix the OP's issue.

I'll leave it at that. Because if you disagree that FDR is overused as a 'fix" for too many issues (so much so people think they have to do it after any "major" OS update), we just won't find middle ground.

[KPMcClave]

I made the recommendation based on the OP saying that they disabled all apps and still couldn't find the culprit.

That tells me that it is hidden, and for we know, the malware was installed by an app and got left behind when the use deleted the original offender...

Except it didn't and it didn't take long to determine that. I immediatly figured it was Clean Master or something like it, as did another guy here. It was a different app, but that same type relationship.

I just wish people would slow down on what is often a knee jerk response where FDR is concerned.

[KPMcClave]

Those were the days. But win XP is still my favourite, even though win 10 boots blindingly fast.
Are there any threads on the site about apps to be cautious off.

I should clairfy my prior mention of Windows, as I also had to reinstall it in my day, as well.

There are certainly times when a FDR is needed, or your best bet. Just as with any version of Windows. Just as with Windows it shoud be your last resort, not your first suggestion.

I'm afraid that horse has left the barn, though.

[Alanhd]

I should clairfy my prior mention of Windows, as I also had to reinstall it in my day, as well.

There are certainly times when a FDR is needed, or your best bet. Just as with any version of Windows. Just as with Windows it shoud be your last resort, not your first suggestion.

I'm afraid that horse has left the barn, though.

I agree a FDR should never be up there as one of the first things to do, my outlook is if you didn't know what caused it in the first place, then how do you know you'r not going to be back in the same situation again.

But I'm not adverse to the nuke it option if I've run out of ideas.

The good thing about a community like this is usually someone can come up with something you might have missed. I for one can sometimes become fixated on what I think might be the problem and miss the obvious.