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.

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.

I’m having same issue and don’t believe it’s a threat, just would like to know why as it does seem strange for it to be accessing contacts when 1. It’s not actually being used and 2. What feature it would related to when it’s about 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!

This isn’t about trust it’s about inconsistency (which leads to distrust). Why do the privacy settings only work for some apps? If apple intends to use Contacts or other Privacy settable info they should show themselves in that info panel, should show it can’t be set, and explain why and what’s going on.

Your basic premise is wrong. You said “Stop Apple Health Accessing My Contacts”. That is wrong. Apple Health is not accessing your contacts. YOUR Health is accessing your contacts. Apple can’t see anything in your Health data, or in any other built-in app. So you are saying that YOU should not be able to access your contacts. Which is sort of ridiculous.

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 does it matter to you? All of those apps exist solely on your phone; no one else sees the content of those apps besides you. If Mail didn’t have access to your contacts you would have to remember the email address of everyone you wanted to send mail to, not just enter part of their name. Likewise for Messages. For Calendar it is used for invitations and to provide addresses for locations of events. Photos uses it to add names to faces, and to show the location where a photo was taken if it is at the address of a contact. These are all features.

Anyway, you can turn it off for Calendar, Camera and Photos.

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.

I will stop responding, as it is pointless. Apple designed the phone so built in apps could share data. If this is unacceptable to you then an iPhone is not for you. But neither is an Android, because they work the same way, except they have less in the way of privacy options, and Google has access to your contacts, calendar and email (Apple does not). Your only solution is a dumb flip phone, and even it will share contacts with the message and phone functions.

You can let Apple know your concern: https://apple.com/feedback.

There are a lot of things that Apple accesses on your iPhone, and some that your carrier does. It would be a lengthy document to describe them all. But since this non-issue involves YOUR Health app accessing YOUR contacts there is no privacy issue at all so Apple is not going to include an explanation. This is one of those reasonable person situations where it is assumed a reasonable person would understand this so Apple does not include any needless explanation. If you think they should then tell Apple here -> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

To add on to LD150's excellent analogy this would be like expecting the manufacturer of your mirror to include an explanation of when you look in a mirror it shows your image.

Health app cannot be turned off nor deleted.

You can choose not to collect data or put in your personal details.

But that does not detract from the fact that stock apps (the ones that you cannot delete like Health, Photos, Safari) do NOT need your permission.

If you think they should then put your justification to Apple...

https://apple.com/feedback

We don't make policy. No one here can change how the phone works. Apple may or may not change it in the future. If the phone you have now is so upsetting to you it may be better to get a different one.  

No I don’t want it to. Not without my permission. IMO that should be a specific request that one can opt out of. (How do I know what contacts it’s accessing?)

And look at all these other apps that are accessing my Contacts without permission - Apple Mail, apple Calendar, Apple Photos. Why is this happening?