iCloud changed all my contacts to Chinese (they were originally in English)

Question

iCloud changed all my contacts to Chinese (they were originally in English)

The other day, I noticed my contacts on my phone disappearing, like vanishing before my eyes, leaving only the contact phone number in its place. Naturally, I went to restore using my iCloud account, but to my horror, iCloud had changed ALL of my contacts to Chinese characters (or seom other character-based language). I literally have no idea where to go. I checked to make sure my iCloud language setting was in English, and it was. Changed my password already in case it was hacked. I eventually restored from an old backup on iTunes, but lost many photos and such in the process, a price I had to pay. Now iTunes won't restore without putting the Chinese names on my phone and I can't put new music on the phone. Fouled. Seriously, fouled.

How do I change them back?

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.2

Posted on Feb 28, 2013 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,588 points

Feb 28, 2013 8:58 PM in response to onderabuckeye

Could you use the camera icon here to post a screen shot of what you are seeing?

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Answer 2

Mar 1, 2013 7:34 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I'm not entirely sure what I can show you, did you want something specific? I deleted all the Chinese contacts and my phone, after restore through the old backup on iTunes, fixed all my contacts. I merely want to be able to use iCloud again, as it's properly supposed to work, for backup and syncing purposes. UPDATE: After I noticed that all the Chinese contact numbers were NOT my contacts I deleted all of them off of iCloud. However, other things in iCloud ARE mine, so it doesn't seem likely that my account was hacked or anything, although I don't know how all those contacts replaced mine.

In sum, my contacts on iCloud were replaced entirely, not just the names being changed.

I basically need the contacts on my iPhone to be uploaded to iCloud now. Any way to do this?

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,588 points

Mar 1, 2013 7:58 AM in response to onderabuckeye

onderabuckeye wrote:

I'm not entirely sure what I can show you, did you want something specific?

I wanted to see what you were calling "chinese", to see whether it really was chinese names or junk chinese caused by encoding glitches (utf8 being read as if it were utf16) or something else entirely.

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Answer 4

Mar 1, 2013 8:06 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Ahhh, my apologies. Well, I wish I could, but unfortunately, I deleted those contacts because they weren't my actual contacts (I checked about 50 numbers, none of which matched my phone, and there were only about 150 of them versus my near 1,000). Sorry I can't be of more help to you, helping me. I appreciate the effort!

If and when I can get the contacts from my iPhone back on iCloud, I would want to prevent it from happening again though.

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