“Lockdown Mode blocked [contact name] from contacting you.”

I noticed this message with the 18.2 upgrade. Around this time I decided to stop subscribing to an app that synced my contacts. Come to find out, only 15 of my contacts were on my iPhone; All of my regular contacts were stored in Google. I synced my Google contacts to my iCloud account with an app so that my contacts can now be found in lockdown mode.

tl;dr - Make sure your Google contacts are stored and synced with your iCloud account.

I have seen the same notifications for contacts in my contact list. I am on iOS 18.2. I called support and talked to a senior tech. They had no hypothesis as to what was happening and only suggested turning off the back on “Lockdown Mode” and entirely resetting the phone’s settings. They had no explanation as to why this is happening. Their suggestions would not result in any change of the current knowledge but would have checked a box. That is if you do these things who knows if it solves anything.

Possible solution. While lockdown is on, go into Home app and open Discover tab. You may get an alert that lockdown mode is active. Then go into privacy/lockdown mode/configure web browsing settings and deactivate lockdown mode for Home.

That setting likely won’t appear until you trigger it in the Home app.

How to turn on Lockdown Mode on iPhone or iPad

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll down, tap Lockdown Mode, then tap Turn On Lockdown Mode.
4. Tap Turn Off Lockdown Mode.
5. Tap Turn Off & Restart, then enter your device passcode.

About Lockdown Mode - Apple Support (IN)

Went looking for an answer on this as well. I’ve had my phone on lockdown mode for about 2 years with no problems. Recently started getting the same notification that it blocked certain people from contacting me, also it’s just started prevented random texts from coming thru…some from my mom and others who are definitely not on any blocked list. I switch back from lockdown mode and a bunch of random texts show up from weeks back. But not all the texts…I’ll have a text convo with my mom just fine with no problems…but then weeks later take my phone off lockdown mode and suddenly a ton of extra texts I never saw pop in from her. I feel more comfortable with lockdown mode on, but would like to know why it’s preventing certain random friends and family from contacting me, and why it’s not sending/receiving certain random texts. Doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason because all have been known and trusted contacts/friends/family.

I just started receiving these notifications this week for contacts that I chat with frequently. I am worried I'm not receiving messages from them. Turned off lock down mode and I didn't have any new messages come through. Anyone have any ideas?

Same problem. This is definitely a new bug in Lockdown mode with the new iOS update. Someone at Apple needs to be assigned to this.

I was getting notifications that lockdown blocked people who I contact regularly and also some people that are in my contacts but who do not contact me regularly. Not sure if I missed messages or not.

I turned in lockdown mode 2 days because I’ve had suspicious activity on many of my social media accounts including someone hacking my FB and changing my password and somehow email too. I started getting weird autofills on new apps for a random email registered with a Polish domain. Last night in lockdown mode I received a notification on my iPhone that “Lockdown mode blocked Mike from contacting you.”(semi-frequent contact, but I had just texted with him the day before lockdown mode). I ignored it because I was busy with something. An hour later I got the same notification on my MacBook. So I texted him and asked him if he sent me anything or texted me and he said no. I turned off lockdown mode worried that I was missing comms from people, then freaked out and turned it back on the next morning. Could this be a malicious attempt being blocked? Maybe a virus or something-ware using contacts to try to get past lockdown mode?

I’ve had this problem too. Lockdown mode has blocked calls from people less than an hour after interacting with them on the phone. In some cases I asked callers if they called when my phone said lockdown mode blocked their call and they said no.

We’ve also had a ticket open with apple support for over a year with no follow up about lockdown mode disabling call notifications on apple watch until the caller hangs up. It doesn’t seem like lockdown mode is a priority project with apple. So few people use it in comparison to all iphone users. Communication with tech support or in community has been a waste. No official bug reports posted or follow ups.

If tech support agents at apple don’t understand lockdown mode and if nobody is tracking bugs and providing feedback to users, lockdown might as well be a smoke screen causing frustration in exchange for a benefit that’s not really there - better security. Does it do anything beyond “appear” more secure? We can’t even see metrics showing if or when lockdown mode ever blocked malware or a virus. We just see it block calls from people we trust.

They should provide options out of the box that at least help mitigate some attacks via text message by allowing users to block attachments and the ability to disable live links and instead show full url and force users to copy paste in browser if they trust it like they do in lockdown mode, or disable text that come from unknown email addresses and or short code numbers. This way we don’t end up with a phone blocking calls from trusted contacts.

Security problem have become ridiculous across the board. Working in IT, the number of people i’ve had report someone had access to their text message content, photos and location without ever having physical access to their phone is overwhelming. Previously you needed skill to create or deploy malware. You even needed to jailbreak a phone. Not anymore. From ~2018 to now, online tools have rapidly lowered the bar to effective cyber attacking.

If apple prioritized user security over features and convenience we’d be in much better shape. The allusion is all thats prioritized. iphone doesn’t appear anymore secure to me than android or windows phone.

+1

i only use facetime on my laptop

and facetime started blocking contacts who are in my address book, and whom i facetime, and who facetime me. regularly.

i had fallout with a contact who got angry thinking "i blocked them" , and while its not apples fault this person isnt terribly bright or patient.... i still got pummelled with snark and have been iced out . maybe at this rate i should block them! but im still very unhappy about it.

i didnt turn this on and cant find any kind of setting to undo it or allow my contacts other than disabling lockdown altogether. every time i do a software update, something else is broken and locked down on my laptop totally unannounced.

this is why i do not have icloud enabled at all on my phone anymore

getting tired of people being angry and blaming me for this.

Jenjen I think you’re right. This was my first thought also. I think the contact was using a program that is either trying to find your location or somehow get into your phone. Same thing happened to me after I turned the setting on due to some weird things happening on my phone. Trust your intuition. I don’t think I’ll associate myself with the person/contact who Lockdown mode blocked.

I'm in the same situation here. I've been running in lockdown mode since it was released, but over the last couple of months, I've been getting notifications about blocked contacts on my phone. This has never happened before and needs to be solved.

Why is it so difficult to find an answer to this??

No documentation ANYWHERE?

comon 🍎

makave160 wrote:

Why is it so difficult to find an answer to this??

No documentation ANYWHERE?

comon 🍎

Really?

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