Strange / suspicious disk eject error message?

[Ph.D.]

I have had a few false "disk not ejected properly" messages pop up on a laptop. By false, I mean that no device of that name was ever attached by me. The device name was a person's name (not mine, etc.) in one case and a normal-sounding attached storage device name in another (also nothing to do with me). No device was attached at any time proximate to the messages.

This feels very uncomfortable. What's up? Thoughts? Ideas?

 

[Ph.D.]

Bump because it happened again. Scary! What could cause this?

 

[carlsson]

It may be many different things.
Open the app Terminal and write "ls /Volumes" and press Return. What volumes are listed there?

 

[Ph.D.]

It may be many different things.
Open the app Terminal and write "ls /Volumes" and press Return. What volumes are listed there?

InstallESD Macintosh HD

I presume the InstallESD device is related to a pending OS-X update?

This is a late model MacBook Pro with SSD and USB-C. I noted in the past that a USB storage device that I had attached had on rare occasions produced this error (in an otherwise normal fashion) many hours after it was removed, which was weird enough. But the warnings that I'm worried about had absolutely no connection to me nor anything that I could interpret as normal.

What sort of "many different things" could it be?