I have this issue and I found that a bug already exists at least 6 months ago. Also, auto reporting in Ubuntu reports sends a report every day as well. The issue is, if you suspend the laptop and come back, the wifi icon in the top bar is gone. I guess that is what you called the nm-applet. You can…

Nm-applet bug in 16.04

meetdilip October 24, 2017, 4:20am 3

I did notice the bug report at the time I tried to solve it. But didn’t notice the bug entry details.

I just found something similar dated 05/16

Thanks @popey