if an iPhone was stolen will the old contacts have been saved to iCloud or will the have to have been backed up on iTunes?

Hi mandicorbett,

If you have iCloud, you can check to see if your Contacts are there:

https://www.icloud.com/

Sign on with your iCloud ID and then click on the Contacts icon.

Cheers,

GB

Contacts will be wherever the user put them. Did you configure them to sync to iCloud, another cloud service, or a supported application on the computer via iTunes? If not, they are gone.