Weird alert popped up on my screen when I unlocked my phone...

[anon(10181084)]

Ok, so a few few minutes ago I picked up my phone with the intent of continuing to browse the internet. All I had open before I locked it was a FireFox session with rambler.ru (popular Russian search engine I use to find stuff Google cannot). When I went to unlock my phone (CAT S41 with Android 8.0 and latest January 1st 2019 security patch) it spewed up a gray background and an Android 4.x style holo-themed dialog window telling me that my SD card was ready for ejection and asking me whether I wanted to eject it. I panicked and clicked cancel. My wallpaper showed up and then my launcher (Lean Launcher) loaded back up. I suspect this could be a virus, but my super-sensitive security software scans downloaded APKs before and after installation and I am super careful when sideloading apps. I've never seen this weird prompt in my 6 years of Android experience. My phone is not rooted. Could this be a failing SD card or is it just some adware I picked up from some potentially infected website? My SD card works fine, so I see no reason to *eject* it. I don't know what to make of this since I obsessively care about my device security and don't know what in the world would cause this.

 

[SpookDroid]

Sounds like an SD card going bad to me. Either about to go bad, or just simply dislodged for some reason. That can happen, too, if the card's been in there for a while.

 

[Tim1954]

Maybe turn off device, take out the card and gently clean the gold contacts in the card and on the reader. Insert card and boot up... I do that with the sim card too now and then... I use alcohol wipes (isopropyl alcohol) or methylated spirits

 

[anon(10181084)]

Thanks for the answers! It only happened once and everything is back to normal. Not sure what it was. I will keep an eye on the SD card though. The card is 2.5 years old, so it's not exactly new.