Address Book Automatically Adding Contacts

Question

Level 1

34 points

Address Book Automatically Adding Contacts

I opened my Address Book the other day and noticed right away that the number of contacts had grown by almost 10. A quick search through the contact cards revealed something quite unusual. I had 10 identical copies of the same contact info for Apple. I believe this contact is found in every copy of Address Book as a default contact. So, I erased 9 of the copies and kept one for future reference. A few days later I go back and 3 more copies of the Apple contact card are back in the Address Book. I deleted again and repeated several times with the contacts still mysteriously reappearing after each delete. Finally, I deleted all copies of the Apple contact card and I also logged into my Mobile Me account on the web and deleted the card there as well. No dice. This morning I had 3 more copies of the Apple contact card in my address book. Anybody have any clue as to what is going on here? Thought I'd check here first before contacting Apple. This is utterly bizarre.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 15, 2009 12:31 PM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Jun 15, 2009 12:55 PM in response to David Ivey

try resetting mobileme sync data.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1497

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Answer 2

David Ivey Author

Level 1

34 points

Jun 15, 2009 3:12 PM in response to V.K.

I tried resetting the sync data the first time this happened and it happened again. Nevertheless, on the outside chance something didn't go right, I have again reset the Mobile Me sync data and have replaced all of the contact info on Mobile Me with the contact info on my home computer. If the contact reappears again I will report it here on this post.

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Answer 3

Jun 24, 2009 1:47 PM in response to David Ivey

Wow. I found something similar. I do not use MAIL as my primary email account at al and AddressBook is rarely open. Yet last nignt when I synced my new iPhone to download conatacts I saw that tons of email address contacts were downloaded from my address book...people I do not know and something strange in that often two unrelated email addrsses were downloaded as one contact. An many of these contacts were duplicates and triplicates. Not as many as ten as Mr Ivey writes. But clearly something is amuk here.
Is there a known addressbook virus>? something pulling email addresses out from cyberspace and putting in addressbooks? The addresses I see are totally unknown. There are at least 100 of them. And it is painful to delete them one by one from my iPhone
Where could this be coming from?

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Answer 4

David Ivey Author

Level 1

34 points

Jun 24, 2009 1:57 PM in response to David Ivey

Well, I just checked my address book again and I now have two new entries for Apple Computer that have automatically been added to my address book by some unknown process - I presume it's Mobile Me. This is beyond weird and I guess I will have to contact Apple directly about it and make them aware of their unwanted intrusions into my address book.

Again, resetting the sync data in Mobile Me fixed the problem for about a week or two and now it is reappearing again. So, that is not a fix.

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Answer 5

David Ivey Author

Level 1

34 points

Jun 24, 2009 1:59 PM in response to Barbara Passman3

What e-mail app do you use and are you a Mobile Me user? Since I am still having the same issues myself I really can't offer any suggestions to try. This is totally strange to me.

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Answer 6

Jul 4, 2009 10:23 AM in response to David Ivey

I use Eudora as my email client. But some time ago I imported my address book items from Eudora into Apple Mail. Those are not the problem.
Even though Apple Mail is barely ever launched, it seems to somehow grab email addresses from email correspondence and even from web browsing (i.e email addresses for some software companies to whom I have sent an email through the companie's web page, or from which company I have purchased items.

I also notice that these rogue email addresses imported into Apple Address Book are corrupted. The email address is accompanied by a second email address which often is the address of someone totally unrelated, a legit email address which I have and want in the Address Book.

Yes, I am a Mobile Me subscriber. Have been since Apple first offered service as " iTools".

There does seem to be a problem. Whom can we notify at Apple? Do any system engineers ever peruse these posts?

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Answer 7

David Ivey Author

Level 1

34 points

Jul 14, 2009 8:18 PM in response to David Ivey

One interesting thing to report. In the settings for the address book I had sharing turned on so that my wife and some other family members could use my address book. Due to a sync problem with Mobile Me and it inadvertently wiping out my address book, I turned the sharing feature off in my address book. Since doing this I have not had any more strange additions to the address book at all. Prior to this I was still getting additions to my address book almost on a weekly basis. If you have your address book shared I would highly recommend you turn that feature off. Make sure you have a Time Machine back up of your address book or backed up by some other means before turning sharing off. There is something not working correctly between address book, sharing and mobile me.

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