Stop Apple Health Accessing My Contacts!

Instead of blindly defending Apple’s (lack of) privacy policies, how about if I offer a truly helpful response? Sound good? OK!

Your Health app stores personal information you have entered into your phone. It allows you to have access to your own health information all in one location, but also to share it with family, doctors, medical studies in which you choose to participate, AND (here’s the smoking gun) it will display some basic medical information on your locked screen for emergency responders to use and it will automatically call your emergency contacts!

The health app is looking through your contacts for your current flagged “Emergency Contacts”.

Open the Health app and review your profile (click on your photo in the app) and “Access to *Medical ID” to update or delete functions that require access to your contacts.

Disable the function that will automatically call your emergency contacts (if you use Emergency SOS to call for help, your phone notifies these contacts.)

Disable the function that will display your *Medical ID on your Lock Screen (so emergency responders can see it and also notify your emergency contacts).

Remove any medical information and emergency contacts from your *Medical ID. This would be information you previously entered.

And voila! You have now stopped the Health App from using any of your contact or personal information. Once you realize WHY the app is pinging your contacts, it’s easy to decide whether to keep it or not.

I’ve dealt with a friend who had a stroke and we couldn’t access his phone to contact family because he only used facial recognition (life support equipment gets in the way of that). After that experience, I chose to keep my own name, emergency contact numbers, blood type, and allergies listed in the Health app so anyone can pull it up on the locked screen. It’s your choice.

Hello ~ Here you go…

Delete built-in Apple apps from the Home Screen on your iOS 14 or later or iPadOS device or Apple Watch - Apple Support

~Katana-San~

Clock -> alarm -> music library

Health -> emergency contacts

Simple when you THINK about it

Settings, privacy, Contacts

can you turn off Health?

Same problem. Contacts privacy setting does not show Apple Health as requesting contacts. But the new privacy report show Apple Health accessing my contacts.

(already ok carefully at the screenshots before asking me which is which.)

Either the new Privacy Report is wrong, or Apple Health is accessing Contacts without permission. Which is it Apple?

See - no mention of Apple Health.

But look - Apple Health is accessing Contacts!

The privacy app is telling me that apps I don’t use are accessing my Contacts. And the Contacts privacy page doesn’t have a way to turn off their access. This is broken and should be fixed.

[Edited by Moderator]

You need to tell Apple you want this, they aren't here: Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I doubt they are going to make the changes you want but you can try. Your other opting is to buy a phone that doesn't do this which means you will need to skip one running Android.

It has been explained above. You can put emergency contacts in Health app under Medical ID

Health will need to check every so often if they have been edited.

All stock Apple apps have access to all your data, permission is assumed.

Why shouldn’t the Health app access your contacts? It is your health data, not anyone else’s, and not accessible by anyone else. So it is as private as your contacts; actually MORE private than your contacts, because your contacts sync to your email account(s), so if you have a gmail account then Google has access to your contacts; likewise for AOL, Yahoo, your ISP, and anyone who hacks an email account. But your heath data exists totally on your phone, totally under your control, not accessible to anyone else. And the Health app needs access to your contacts for your emergency contact information.

You’re very welcome. Apple rarely recommends a level 1 answer, but most level 10s didn’t bother understanding the real question. It’s not nice to berate someone for asking how their phone works. Many iPhone apps like Health, Calendar and Contacts (and the telephone function 😁) are designed to work together like a computer operating system (which iOS is). Integrated apps perform functions like file management, network management, device management, and I/O processing, but it’s not intuitive (to most people) how they work. The IP had a reasonable request for understanding.

I rarely post; sadly, I find these open forums to be terribly condescending to newcomers.

Settings>Privacy>then go down to the bottom and look at App Privacy Report. That is where you will see which Apps access this information. And if you click on the right arrow you will see when the information was accessed. Now why is it accessing my Contacts when I have NOT SET UP any emergency contacts? Now how about clicking on Show All. Now this list will show you and gives me a idea as to why some of tghese apps take data. Frequently you will see that this is an apps that is contacting website network activity. That is so the app wuill work correctly. I have no issues with that. The App Privacy Report also shows you which web sites want to track your on-line behavior, for instance Ggoogle, Twitter and what not. I use that software. This is why if you Turn Off App Privacy Report daily, this will in now way make your life difficult, but will deprive the software people data they want and each day you will start fresh.

"....Now why is it accessing my Contacts when I have NOT SET UP any emergency contacts? ..."

It has not accessed them if you have not put in any emergency contacts.

Having access is not the same as accessing.

It has been explained.

This thread is old enough to have grandkids.

It's bot about threat or importance. What do you work for Apple? Apple nor it's apps should have a intrusive "by-default"right to access anyones contacts without permission. Customers pay sometimes a 1,000 for a phone. It is not Apples property, the use of there software is proprietary. So, NO they should not access contacts without permission. The people defending the hidden "Contact Grab by any default app" must work for Apple. Why is there no setting to turn it off? We Screenshot it every week and send it to the FTC & FCC. If they say it's ok, then I won't mind.

Report it. Screenshot it and Report It.

I guess you didn’t read the thread you posted to either. You have emergency contacts in your Health app that are available to first responders. How is it going to use those contacts if it can’t access them?