Lost contacts, iPhone 4

Well that was a slightly patronising reply post Johiden. are you calling my wife unintelligent - yes i do believe you are.

please remember that many people have come to owning an iphone after many years of owning other makes and models of phones - probably none of which have wiped all their contact information without any action from themselves.

Contact information is important and i myself back up my own contacts ( i must be intelligent ;-) ) BUT only since owning an apple product though as i don't feel my information is treated as safely on it as it is with other handsets.

Contact information is usually protected and stored as a seperate block/folder on other handsets on the sim card and it would take a lot of effort to erase all that information.

I personally think Apple is 100% to blame for the contacts being wiped. wether or not you have them backed up is a distraction from this and a seperate issue.

In your anaology of windows systems etc - would you be happy if microsoft somehow accessed or sent a code to your PC and wiped all your important documents? I would be looking for answers as to why, even if i had backed them all up I would still demand answers as it would have been a big flaw in the operating system.

I think Apple should at least acknowledge and apologise to it's customers for the huge inconvenience they (and only they) have caused. It doesn't matter if your contacts were backed up or not as that isn't the point.

Johiden, perhaps you misunderstood.

It's not about whether you backed up or not.

I did back up, religiously, every Sunday.

The point if you read carefully, is that even the back up won't sync back to the iPhone. The contacts reappear for 30 seconds at best, then disappear again in front of your eyes.

No turning on and off of iCloud, no external software, and no other tricks fix it. It's a major flaw from Apple.

Johiden,

I started with PC DOS before Windows and GUI .... and in all those years of working with evolving technology I had never seen anything that did not allow you to format your device and reinstall fresh with any version of the operating system that you choose... until of course I came across the Iphone... I have no idea which Apple guru though that one up, but it proves only one thing .... the difference between genius and stupidity is that stupidity has no limits.

Wiping out contacts and phots is only one element of the evergrowing list of issues....there is also wi-fi problems (which for a phone is the kiss of death ... a wireless device that does not do wireless?) additionally,the constant crashing for no reason whatsoever, then there is the infinite boot loop with the apple logo, not to mention the battery drain... oh yes and from IOs 4.3 the Iphone became picky about which blue tooth it likes and which it dislikes.

Nuff said.....I really do apple, but this one is a sour granny smith!

Same thing happened to me lost all contacts who had no email address attached and I lost my notes too, now thinking of divorcing iPhone after long happy years.

Great solution from LUNG on this thread...he helped save my contacts.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3899761?start=0&tstart=0

good luck everyone!

Thanks for the link to LUNG. I lost my contacts earlier tody in the same manner as everyone else but the solution from LUNG worked a treat and now I have them all back.

It still doesn't absolve Apple though and they need to investigte why this is happening in the first place, and sort it.

Happened a few days ago to my wife's iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1.1. I've never seen such a large bug on the iPhone. Disturbing. Will try to backup via USB and iTunes.

Same thing just happened to me. Was using FB and was locked out of the app a few times, then it automatically reset itself and my contacts were gone.

Was not able to restore contacts. Had to do it manually.

I lost over 100 contacts as well. Went to sleep one night, then the next moring they were all gone!!! I have a business to run! All my contacts are gone. I used Dr. Fone on OSX to find and recover them, but it found nothing. This tells me that they weren't deleted. Just misplaced somehow. If I do the left swipe action after entering the password to my phone, and search; it comes up with a contact and shows the name from a text. When you click on that name, it just takes you to the phone number with the text conversation. I don't text all my clients though, so all the other people whom I never text have been lost. This must be a directory error. A background update must have been made by apple that screwed this up. I smell lawsuit...

hey guy.....there are soultion how to fix this if they bother to find it ....it is all within this forum . i have even put down one or two post how i restored it back , other people being helpful as well sharing how they got the system back .

apple iphone been so good for me for the last 2 years ...never really have a real problem with it ..simple and easy

i have not able to confirm what causing it ...

1.but i am suspect it have to do with dropping out of icloud

2.that i am the cause , Not so sure / or care how to use the iphone , without knowing how the backup work , it is my data , i should take the step to back it up ...no one else problem or respondable ...

everything that move will eventually dead , you and me ....

3. i didnt understand or even know my phone address were stored on icloud on the first place .

4. i might have installed to many rubbish app and not knowing how to close the app might cause the memory overloaded .

i used to point the finger at people when something happened to me ....but now i learn when ever i blame somone else of thing happen to mylife ..i lose my own power .

that all i have to say cheers ...good luck .amen

Overall, i think Apple needs to issue a statement that iOS 5.1.x is no longer supported and it is subject to security issues.

Basically the same boat that Windows XP will be in next year.

Any subsequent security isues found will not be fixed, etc.

People should upgrade to the most recent firmware if they want to stay protected from hack attacks.

From US-CERT:

Original release date: March 20, 2013

Apple has released iOS 6.1.3 for the iPhone 3GS or later, iPod touch 4^th generation or later, and iPad 2 or later to address multiple vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to operate with elevated privileges, bypass security features or execute arbitrary code.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to review Apple Support Article HT5704 and follow best practice security policies to determine which updates should be applied.

I believe we should all have backups, but when this appears to show up w/o any real input from me, it seems like a bug in the iOS software. It is strange to me why it starts right now for a lot of people. I haven't updated the iOS for a long time, still running 5.1, and I haven't any new Apps either. Seems like a previous Apple employee created a time bomb in iOS. I am not using iCloud so I won't blame it.

My contacts disappeared Sunday, I loaded a backup on the phone and they went away again Yesterday.

evgu wrote:

I haven't updated the iOS for a long time,

You just solved your own issue.

I lost all my contacts a few days ago. I connect my phone to the PC every day (sometimes multiple times), so I have good backups. However, Apple doesn't maintain discreete backups, instead, each update overlays the last. So I had already backed up since I lost the contacts, so they are gone, gone, gone.

Add me to the list. It all started with that when I tried to open an app it just crashed. I rebooted, and it fixed the problem with the apps but I lost all my contacts.

Running 4S iOS 5.1.1