Deleted Contacts Reappear - Zombie Contacts

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Deleted Contacts Reappear - Zombie Contacts

I have several devices using iCloud syncing for Contacts, all running the latest software.

Whenever I delete a contact from one of the devices, it will re-populate within a week. This also includes modifying contact information, where the old data re-populates. I have "deleted" contacts MULTIPLE times now and they keep coming at me like zombies.

How do I permanently delete or modify my contacts?

Side note: I have noticed that some of the contacts or data that I am deleting has a Facebook address associated with the contact. I also seem to have recently updated information in my Contacts book that I did not update myself, and appears to have been done by some service running either on my client or in the cloud...

Mac Studio (2022)

Posted on Feb 28, 2024 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

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Mebetebe Author

Level 1

30 points

Mar 2, 2024 1:09 PM in response to Mebetebe

Followup on this (my) Zombie Contact issue:

I found a helpful post for a similar complaint. What I did was close out my Contacts app on my Mac, then use the iCloud.com portal to delete/update the contacts there. I also removed all Facebook data from every contact for good measure. I let it simmer in the cloud for a day, and then rechecked my Mac Contacts list. Happily, this solved 95% of my issues.

Odd observation while doing this cleanup - there were dozens of contacts in my iCloud Contacts list that were deleted YEARS ago that NEVER repopulated on my devices. I would never have seen them had I not used the iCloud web portal. Almost like it knew (marked) they were deleted, but iCloud retained the data.

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Deleted Contacts Reappear - Zombie Contacts

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