I think someone/thing has hacked me

[Cattaway]

My battery life just drains like it's nothing even though I don't have running apps and have background usage turned off for virtually all apps, my phone gets very hot randomly, I'm still unable to take screenshot "due to security policy" which I have not set up, am constantly redirected to random things when even using simple apps like my phone app. I have been receiving an unusually high amount of spam phone calls, texts, and emails. My phone will act as if it is taking a screenshot when I look at certain things in my settings (security, apps that have access to data usage, seeing what certain apps have stored on my device) it will either kick me back to the settings page or take what I can only describe as a screenshot. I keep getting notifications of "unusually high data usage/consumption" even after revoking the permission on every app.. what is happening.. I have a galaxy s8 through at&t...

My Google browser also is acting very strange, I look at my activity and other Google activity and it doesn't show any obvious things wrong but it seems off.... if that makes sense like something just doesn't look right. It constantly asks me to re enter my password to verify even though I'm literally logged in already. It won't load most pages and when I try and resubmit the request it just force closes.

When I tried to upload a photo to this forum it told me "all apps associated with this action have been turned off, blocked, or are not installed." So.... there's that..

 

[LordAndroid]

Have you completely wiped everything off the device and factory reset it?

 

[Cattaway]

No because I can't seem to back up my data. I'm only concerned about the photos, I have a new baby and don't want to lose those. I just got this phone in january

 

[Cattaway]

Have you completely wiped everything off the device and factory reset it?

Also please see my edit. If I can find the malicious app/hardware I can attempt to remove it.

 

[LordAndroid]

No because I can't seem to back up my data. I'm only concerned about the photos, I have a new baby and don't want to lose those. I just got this phone in january

You can back up your photos to Google photos assuming your signed into your Google account through the device itself. Once you do that your photos will be stored in the cloud

 

[Cattaway]

You can back up your photos to Google photos assuming your signed into your Google account through the device itself. Once you do that your photos will be stored in the cloud

My worry with that is that my Google is also acting very strange. I found on my server settings that I had IMAP enabled (I honestly have no idea what that is) so if it's my Google as well I don't feel that would be safe.

 

[LordAndroid]

Create a new Google account

 

[Rukbat]

IMAP is the type of email account that a gmail account defaults to. It's not only normal, it's probably what you want (as opposed to a POP3 account, the other choice).

Connect the phone to your PC. Look in notifications to see if it says that it's connected - it should. Tap that and make sure it's set to 'transfer files' or 'MTP' (or even 'PTP'). (It may default to 'charging'.)

Then look at the phone from the PC - it should look like a new hard drive. Open that and you should see a folder named DCIM. Your pictures are in there, probably in a folder named Camera. Drag them, one at a time, to the PC. (You can make a folder on the PC for them.) Then they're safe.

Then factory reset the phone.

(It sounds like a virus or other malware to me, that's causing all of the problems.)

 

[pinkvikchick]

Exactly what Rukbat said, drag and drop your pics to your pc, and then wipe that phone clean! That is the first thing I thought of.

 

[justnivek]

you could also get a cheap sd card from Wal-Mart that is enough to hold all your pics

(use the my files app and see how big the DCIM folder is that's in your phone and then by a SD card that is good enough)

 

[Gayle Lynn]

All versions of Chrome on Android were acting up for me last Fri-Sat so that I could not even power off - it finally did after multiple tries and holding power key for 30 seconds. Scary.

It sounds a bit like those crypto mining has gotten in there.

Can't hurt to sign out of Google and remove all your devices. Can add back later. And setup tw0-factor authentication if you have not already.

Try booting in Safe Mode and also before doing that, wipe the cache partition. A PC is easier than Mac for backing up media files.

Did you have Samsung auto backup your photos? There's also Amazon if you have Prime, as well as MS OneDrive - and SD card. In fact Samsung has a nice external USB-C 64 or 128GB SD card. US$45

Samsung MUF-64DA1/WW 64GB USB Type-C/USB 3.1 Flash Drive, Blue
by Samsung https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MUF-...ag=hawk-future-20&ascsubtag=UUacUvbUpU6181145

 

[monil]

FB/ Instagram/ SnapChat are good battery hoggers...