Help SGS4 Root Information

[bellebrit]

Hi, I joined this forum because everyone seems pretty knowledgeable and helpful so hopefully someone can help me out. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 through iWireless (a TMobile affiliate) yesterday I got on my phone and while I was on the home screen a little box popped up saying my phone might be infected click for information. It looked like it was an android message so I clicked on it and it pulled up my Internet and sent me to a weird looking URL. When the page was done loading it said my phone was infected with a virus and may crash, click on this link, but I didn't trust it so I immediately exited out of the page. I downloaded AVG antivirus and ran a scan and everything came up clean, except the settings. I clicked on the notification and it said "unsecure privilege mode, detected, your phone is running in high privilege mode (it's rooted)" I had no idea what it meant so I started looking for info online. I found a couple sites that said sometimes AVG says that, even though you're phone isn't actually rooted, so I did what it suggested and downloaded root checker and checked if it was rooted. It said that, yes, my phone is rooted. I thought maybe my son had done something to my phone, so I downloaded root checker on my husband's phone (my son doesn't play with his) and it says his is rooted too. I had no idea what that even was so I've been looking around and from what I can tell you have to go through a whole process to actually root a phone, which neither me or my husband ever did yet both of our phones are rooted. Could my phone have come automatically rooted out of the box? If not could an app with a virus or malware or something have remotely rooted my phone and be steeling my information or harming my phone? From what I've read I wouldn't mind my phone being rooted, but I didn't root it and don't know how it got rooted and that's worrying me. Any help would be appreciated. Thank You.

 

[Rukbat]

Could something have happened? Yes. Did it? No idea.

Best bet is to unroot the phone. Open SuperSU or SuperUser and see if there's a choice (in the menu) to unroot.

 

[allanlaw]

First obvious question: were these phones new when you got them? They were obviously rooted, either before you opened the box (if they were not new) or after.

 

[bellebrit]

Thank you for responding, now are those apps that I have to download, or is it something already in my phone? I read that I could unroot by doing a factory reset also, but I was trying to avoid that I'd possible.

 

[bellebrit]

Yes, they were brand new when we got them. The guy at iWireless even had us open the package (it was still sealed) Like I said, I thought maybe my son did something but when I checked my husband's his was rooted too and my son doesn't touch his phone unless he's sitting right next to him.

 

[bellebrit]

Could something have happened? Yes. Did it? No idea.

Best bet is to unroot the phone. Open SuperSU or SuperUser and see if there's a choice (in the menu) to unroot.

I wanted to quote my last reply to you but I didn't know how. Haha.

So I went and downloaded SuperSU, but when I pulled it up it said "there is no SU binary installed on this device and we cannot install one, this is a problem" and when I hit ok it just exits the app.

I uninstalled that and tried Superuser, when I open it, it says "the super user binary must be updated, choose an installation method, cancel, recovery install, or install" when I hit cancel it said there are no super user app policies and won't let me do anything else.

 

[valorian]

If SU will not install then I don't think your phones are rooted. Plus if someone rooted your phone it would have already had SU installed. I cannot answer why root checker is saying it's rooted. I've never used this app.

 

[bellebrit]

Ok, so now I'm really confused. I went back into root checker, and now it's saying I do not have proper root access. I downloaded 2 other root checkers and they all say my phone is not rooted. I just checked my husband's and his is not rooted anymore either. Why did it say they were rooted and now it says they're not? I deleted a ton of apps that my son had downloaded, but other than that and downloading a clean sweep app I haven't done anything to my phone. And my husband didn't do anything period to his..... What the heck is going on. Can a phone just root and unroot like that, by itself??

 

[valorian]

No, a phone cannot root an unroot itself. My only guess is one of the apps your son downloaded what making root checker think your phone was rooted.

You could do a factory reset to be sure anything weird is cleared out from any apps your son downloaded. Be sure your contacts and calendars are synced to Google so you don't loose any information.

I'm 99.9% sure your phones are not rooted.

 

[gnosisjunky]

It will probably be very difficult to get right down to the bottom of why this happened. There are about a million possible reasons. What seems likely however is that one of the apps that you uninstalled was the cause. Personally I think that anti virus software on android does nothing beneficial at all and the best way to keep your phone secure and avoid weird errors like this is to avoid 99% of the apps out there. Most of them are under developed and do cause very strange things to happen. They also chew up battery life. A factory reset is definitely in your best interest and not as not as much of a pain as it used to be. Also having a good file explorer is super handy for getting rid of rogue folders that stick around after you uninstall apps. Hope this helps

 

[allanlaw]

You could do a factory reset to be sure anything weird is cleared out from any apps your son downloaded. Be sure your contacts and calendars are synced to Google so you don't loose any information.

Absolutely right - do a factory reset after syncing everything, and you'll have a clean starting point for the future. And it is not a big deal - I did a bunch of factory resets when I was chasing down a problem I had several months ago, and the only pain was having to reset some settings here and there.

Good luck - and keep your son away from your phone