On my morning commute I was driving along listening to spotify and using waze via android auto (plugged in via USB). All of a sudden, music stops - I look at my phone and it is kind of stuck on a zoomed in T-Mobile logo, and after about 5 or 10 seconds the OneUI splash shows up with text like "erasing data". Then the phone restarted.
Now my phone is completely reset - I had to accept terms, link a google account, link a samsung account, refuse a bunch of apps, etc. I couldn't even do this really because of 2FA and the fact that my phone is not really "on" and this point (I can't do anything except follow these start up prompts). I created a new google account just so that I could get into the phone. And sure enough, everything is gone - contacts, photos, notes, media, messages, apps, passwords, etc.
I'm not too concerned with the data, I think I'll be able to get most of this back from backups, but how could this happen with 0 input from me? Could android auto have issues something over the USB? Could a bad actor have done this remotely without any input from me? One other thing I thought about is that I have something called "intune" I think installed, which lets me access my company e-mail/chats. Could my IT department have wiped my phone because of this? I already asked them but they said no...