Hacked via Bluetooth or ?

[Lorenzo F]

I recently added the Bluetooth icon to the menu bar in macOS, and in that same day I was alarmed to see the 3 dots that indicate that a device was connected. I took a look at System Preferences and discovered that someone's phone, which I don't recognize and never connected to, was "connected", as seen below:

I then hovered over that Bluetooth entry and hit X to remove it from the list. Moments later, I then found that the person's phone was showing up in triplicate, and one of the entries said "Couldn't connect to the device" as seen below:

The next day, I found my computer was connecting yet again to this phone. This doesn't make sense to me because I had hit the X button the day before, which to my understanding meant that my computer would "forget" this device and not connect unless I explicitly gave it permission.

I tried rebooting my computer, and I even upgraded to Catalina. I still have the problem. Then today, upon opening up my computer from sleep, I noticed that the 3 dots were on the Bluetooth symbol in the menu. I looked in the System Preferences and see nothing connected:

Can anyone provide insight? Has anyone experienced this before?

 

[Taz Mangus]

Try these things:

• Boot into Safe Mode. Login to your user account. Restart back to normal mode. This will clear out the system caches. See if this helps. If it does not then try the next one below.
• Do a SMC and PRAM reset. See if this helps. This should get rid of all the Bluetooth connections. You will need to add them back in again.

The last resort might be to erase and install the OS again. If you go this route, make sure you have a backup of your user data.

Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

If one or more settings stored in NVRAM don't work as expected on an Intel-based Mac, resetting NVRAM might help.

support.apple.com

Reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

The SMC manages power and hardware behavior on your Mac. This troubleshooting article explains when you should reset it, what issues it can fix, and how to perform an SMC reset depending on your Mac model (Apple Silicon, Intel with T2 chip, or older Macs)

support.apple.com

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

You can use macOS Recovery, your computer's built-in recovery system, to reinstall the Mac operating system. Reinstalling macOS doesn't remove your personal data.

support.apple.com