Solved How do I turn off Hot spot on my Oneplus 8? ('phone possible high-jacked!)

[Jim Ford]

Background:
I bought an IOT device that required me to set up a hot spot on my Oneplus 8 Pro. I gave it a try and then disconnected it . It has no onboard power supply, but picks it up off a USB connection.
Problem:
I now find that the hot spot is permanently on and I can't erase the name of the connection and password. The 'tick' for confirming the hot spot setting is greyed out. Also, the hot spot shows in my router Device List on my LAN - and most worrying shows that it's TXing and RXing . Querying the MAC and OUI doesn't produce any data. If I turn off the 'phone the TX and Rx stops.

I'm now suspecting that the IOT device has high-jacked my 'phone and is using the hot spot to capture my data. Fortunately it is blocked by the firewall on my Linux laptop. I've left the 'phone off for now.

In view of the above, is there any way I can completely delete the hot-spot, or do I have to reset the 'phone to be safe? I'd be grateful for a bit of hand holding here!

Jim

 

[B. Diddy]

Can you show us a screenshot of the menu for the hotspot?

 

[Jim Ford]

Thanks for the reply. Jim

 

[B. Diddy]

I doubt that anything nefarious is going on -- I haven't heard of any kind of malware that could do what you're worried about. I'm a bit puzzled about the hotspot SSID showing up in your router's device list -- is the SSID completely different from any other device name that you have? A hotspot wouldn't be connecting to your wi-fi router, because the hotspot is acting like a router itself.

Can you show a screenshot of the router's device list? You can block out any identifying information before sharing the image

 

[Jim Ford]

Thanks again for your help. Here's the screenshot of my router Device List. The suspicious entry is the 'spotpear' one. I'm going to try to familiarise myself with Wireshark to see if I can make anything of the data stream.

This is the problem device:

Jim

 

[Jim Ford]

Resetting the network settings did it. It's buried quite deep in the menu and I didn't realise that the option existed.

On my Oneplus 8 Pro it's:
Settings -> Additional Settings -> Back up and reset -> Reset phone -> Reset network settings.

Jim

 

[B. Diddy]

Glad you figured it out, and this may be helpful for others facing the same issue.