Note 10+ Not Secure

[KLock89]

Sigh...

I have a Note10+ and I'm fairly certain it's not secure even though I have tried numerous antivirus and malware software.

Pictures I havnt taken will show up in my gallery and pictures are deleted without my consent.

The strangest occurence was when I had the phones wifi off, bluetooth off, mobile data off, and the phone in airplane mode and someone was erasing pictures.

I've been trying to figure out what exactly may be going on or how this could be happening. Factory resets have not helped and the problem has spanned multiple devices and networks.

In a log somewhere I remember seeing Odin, I never used the program though.

I feel like someone else has root access to my phone even though my phone is not rooted.

Along the lines of the phone erasing pictures with what appeared to be no way for someone to make a connection, going back to my Galaxy S10 on T-Mobile I had shut the phone off temporarily.

When I checked my usage it had still transmitted cellular data though. When I questioned T-Mobile they couldnt give me an answer as to why.

 

[Unforgiven]

I moved these posts to their own thread in the Note 10 forum. Hopefully a Samsung guru can help you understand whats going on.

 

[Dannydet]

It may be an issue with your Gmail account being hacked or Samsung account. I'd create new ones and get a brand new device

 

[marctronixx]

you are going to have a difficult time getting specific answers to your issues you claim you have.

first, how long have you had the phone? did you buy it new?
are you new to the galaxy note series?

if you used odin, this seems to suggest you had to recover your phone or re-install firmware for some reason. was this the case?

if your phone is not connected to any wireless or bluetooth connection and is in fact "disconnected" as you mentioned, there is no way for someone to gain access to the phone, so something you observed is not doing what you think its doing.

is KNOX activated on your phone?
are you using some 3rd party "antivirus" software? if so you should NOT as that will only cause you more issues.

if you use google drive to store and sync your photos, you may have some setting set to auto delete photos after X time.

there's a lot that could be going on here, and if you factory reset and then reinstall a backup, you are in essence installing the issues back on the device. perhaps do a factory reset and then manually install your data.

 

[Hadron]

When I checked my usage it had still transmitted cellular data though. When I questioned T-Mobile they couldnt give me an answer as to why.

If the phone was actually shut off I'm not surprised, since it's a physical impossibility.
The only explanations are that (a) the phone wasn't shut off, (b) the times for the usage were wrong (a sub-category of (a) really), or (c) there's a problem with your providers' system and they are counting usage that's not actually from your phone.

If you have no internet connection nobody can be actively deleting pictures from your device. So pictures disappearing when you are in airplane mode would mean either an app installed on your device doing it or a faulty (or fake) SD card. If you are storing pictures on SD and they are disappearing it may well be worth backing up what's there and testing the card, especially if it was recently purchased (or particularly old), especially especially if you bought a surprisingly cheap card online. A failing card may randomly delete data, or may suddenly fail completely. A "fake" card is hacked to tell the phone that it has a higher capacity than it really has, which means that once you add more data than its real capacity the new data will start to overwrite old files (with the result that images will randomly disappear, or you still have the thumbnail but the image it links to is broken).

Pictures appearing that you've not taken could be innocent: the gallery app will show any images anywhere on the device, and there are several sources other than your camera that images may come from. If you can tell us what folder they appear in that may provide some clues.

If you are really worried you could take measures to secure your accounts and then reset the phone. Don't try to change passwords using a phone you think may not be secure, so use a different device. Always enable two-factor authentication. And be aware that changing passwords then resetting a phone (or vice-versa), if the events are too close together in time, may result in the phone being locked out for an extended period (because it looks to the anti-theft software as if the phone may be stolen). So if you go this way, remove your Google account from the phone before resetting it (this avoids the Android Factory Reset Protection system being triggered - I do not know anything about any similar systems Samsung may or may not have added).

 

[The_Chief]

But would a phone's Gallery incorporate images from other devices on the same account? I thought the Gallery was for local device images only. My thought is that there is an app that is automatically downloading images: I have no idea what app that might be, but OP needs to investigate installed apps; figure out which app features photos that are also in the Gallery; and check the app settings to see if it has an option to automatically download images. I also didn't read what FOLDER in Gallery these photos are showing up in, but that may be an important clue as to what is causing this.

 

[Hadron]

Yes, what folder they are in in the gallery would be extremely useful information.