Why would a phone factory reset overnight?

[surferdave]

I picked up my phone this morning and was surprised to see the welcome/setup screen and all of my apps and settings gone. This is a major inconvenience I would like to avoid in the future. Any ideas why this would happen?

[ddfuji]

butt dial...

sick joke by someone living with you

Phone Goblins

[FoxKat]

There is no engineered reason why that would happen. If I didn't think the comment before me was meant as a friendly joke, I might even say it was a plausible explanation. There are only two ways I know of for an FDR to be performed. Either from the Security menu selection or from the Recovery menu, and I don't expect you'd get to either purely by accident.

[ddfuji]

it might be something you want to contact motorola or verizon about if you feel like going through the hassle.

[surferdave]

Thanks for the replies. I may have found my answer; ddfuji may not have been far off with Phone Goblins.

While restoring my apps I was restoring my company email (which uses Exchange) and noticed in the process that I had to grant them a lot of permissions on my phone, including the right to factory reset my phone. It never occured to me that someone could do that remotely if I give them permission. I'm not certain that's what happened but it's the most plausible explanation.

I'm trying to decide whether it's worth talking to someome in our massive and immensely powerful corporate IT department to see if they may have done it and why they would; I doubt I end up calling them because it's rarely worth the risk of attracting the attention of known sadists.