I’ve had the A35 for a few days. I turned it on this morning, and got a blue pop up that covered half the screen. Before I could react, a light blue screen primarily in Japanese opened. That screen gave me a choice to restart, reset, or cancel, if I remember correctly. It then went to a download screen with a large arrow in the center. Meanwhile, I’d googled the problem, and the instructions said to hold down both buttons (volume and on-off), which I did. I got a black screen, and eventually the phone started to go through the regular start routine. When I got into the detail, I discovered that the phone had been wiped clean—back to fresh-out-of-the-box status.
In researching what happened, I discovered that a factory reset requires putting in certain kinds of usernames and passwords before the phone can be reset. I did none of that.
- How did this reset happen?
- Can the process be controlled by a bad actor logging in remotely? Can I figure out where that came from?
- Is the phone permanently compromised in some way?
- How do I prevent this in the future?
Thank you for your time and attention.
