I have an Iphone 12 and have experienced some of my contacts disappearing from my contact list. How can i recover contacts from all the way back to October of 2020? And take steps to prevent contacts from bring deleted in the future?

The master copies of contacts are not stored on your iPhone, they sync from one or more email accounts. If you delete an email account that is hosting your contacts they will disappear from your phone. Go to Settings/Contacts/Accounts to see which accounts contain the master copy of your contacts.

• If it is iCloud, then see this→iCloud: Restore contacts, calendars, and more in iCloud Settings
• If it is any other type of email account (e.g, AOL, Yahoo, gmail, hotmail, Outlook) then you need to use whatever tools your email provider offers for recovering contacts
• You may also just not be viewing the contact “groups” in the Contacts app - open the app and tap Groups (or Lists in iOS 16) in the upper left corner and make sure all groups are checked or All Contacts in iOS 16.