iOS thoughts and q's
3This topic is about anything iOS related. Bring the remarks and questions!
However, I posted the topic today because Apple just released an iOS update today.
This update is said to block (or attempt to block) phone intrusion attempts based on the silent & invisible install Pegasus spyware.
Journalists, dissidents, and investigators of big $ operations (operations as drug cartels and corrupt businesses) have been particular targets of this spyware intrusion.
This spyware has been found on the phones of many dissidents and journalists, and is believed to have been on the phone of murdered Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and has been found on the phones of Khashoggi’s friends and co-workers.
And Pegasus spyware was also found on the phones of friends of Princess Haya of Dubai, and was likely on Haya’s own phone.
(Princess Haya was tightly controlled by her father, the ruler of Dubai; and when she made an escape attempt [she wanted to attend medical school and be a physician], his security people kidnapped her.
She’s been imprisoned ever since.)
(She used burner phones during her escape attempt, but apparently made the error of communicating with a friend in Europe, whose phone was infected. This is believed to have allowed the Dubai security agents to track her location by remotely installing spyware on the burner phone number
And also to infect other burner phones of the escape crew with her, if they could get those phone numbers from her burner phone contact list or call log.)
The spyware is said to be undetectable, unless someone has a forensic mobile device investigation lab type setup.
So, unless someone has a great reason for not installing this update, maybe …
Get it done?
(Note: the Israeli company NSO [purveyor of the Pegasus spyware] won’t stop trying to break into phones, and may have other methods ready to go)
- 4 comments, 10 replies
- Comment
I have questions! My iPhone 12 (pro max if it matters) seems to randomly delete my contacts. I had an iPhone 6 for 6 years; got this new phone in spring (March-ish), and it has deleted my contacts REPEATEDLY. When I say deleted them, I mean when I go to contacts, I can’t find the people, and when they text me, it comes up with their number, but not their name. However, to add to the mystery, when I go in things like Snapchat, it acts like all the numbers are still there, and recommends that I connect with people who are no longer listed in my contacts but whom I once had the phone numbers of. I do not understand it and it infuriates me. Twice recently, I saw that someone was no longer in my contacts, added them back in, and the same day they were gone again and I had to re-add them for the second time within 8-10 hours.
Well I guess that’s more of a rant. But if anyone knows how to fix this, I would love to hear it.
@nhbillups
I’m no iOS expert, so I hope someone speaks up re this.
Additional q’s re your situation:
Are you using iCloud Apple backup for your contacts etc?
Also, are your contacts originally saved elsewhere (such as in Gmail, for example) and then imported to the iPhone?
Have you googled this prob looking for info? If so, found anything
Also, do you still have the iphone 6? If so, are the always-deleted contacts still on that phone?
I have an idea of one thing to investigate:
If you still have the six, did you setup the 12 to be a clone of the 6 (ie move/copy the exact config by importing the 6’s exact config & data to the 12)?
If you did that (cloned the 6 to the 12) did you then wipe/reset to shipping state the 6 afterwards?
If you cloned the 6 to the 12, and then didn’t then do a full reset on the 6 afterwards, what did you do with the 6?
I have no idea what’s going on with your phone, but it could have something to do with cloning a phone and then failing to wipe the old phone after.
I’d start investigating either there, or simply by googling “iphone deleted contacts”.
@f00l Thank you! I have iCloud contact backup on. I thought I had saved my contacts in Gmail and/or Yahoo, but apparently that’s not the case. Long story short, I had an abusive ex who did a lot of things behind the scenes with my digital information…however, when I got this new phone, those contacts were still showing up in both the old and new phones, and I haven’t seen that ex in a year, so I know he hasn’t done anything to the new phone. I have tried Googling it, but could only find things about the updates causing it, and no resolution.
I do still have the iPhone 6, and no, the contacts no longer show up there either, unfortunately.
I do not know if I set it up to “clone”; I essentially just followed the prompts for the new phone setup. I did not do anything to the 6 after setting up the 12 though, so maybe that is the problem? But I didn’t delete the contacts from the 6 either, so I don’t know.
I greatly appreciate your response, because this has been plaguing me for months, and it is extraordinarily annoying.
For the record, I did also get an iPhone X for work, in April, and one or two of the contacts in that phone have also been deleted since I’ve put them in…which made me lean toward the update issue, but that only happened there once or twice and meanwhile it happens on my phone at least once a week (that I notice).
@f00l @nhbillups
I do know that if you use Gmail and Google Voice they populate all kinds of stuff into your contacts in Google’s phone app on Android. I know they’re trying to be helpful, but I don’t need some spammer who included his (fake) phone number hoovered up by Google from my gmail account and stuffed into my phone app’s contacts (which are different, by the way from your actual standalone “Contacts” app).
Or to autopopulate people’s phone numbers through their surveillance of the rest of the world.
So there could be some weird interactions between any and all of:
Your Gmail app,
Your IOS Contacts app,
Your IOS Phone app,
Your GVoice app,
Your Google Duo app,
Your Facetime App,
Your SnapChat app,
Your ChatRoulette app,
Your Signal messaging app,
Your Facebook app,
Your Instagram app,
Your Facebook Messenger app,
Your Discord app,
Any other messaging / social media / communications app that “helpfully” helps itself to your contacts database to make it easier to contact (or “engage” as they say)
your friendsanyone you ever came into contact with, ever.Any business “loyalty” app that has any sort of communications features - like emailing or calling support or posting reviews - because that requires access to your phone app and your email app, and guess what else? Your contacts. This includes apps like Yelp, DoorDash, InstaCart, GrubHub, Uber, Lyft, AngiesList, Costco, Target, Walmart, Sams Club, Amazon, etc, your banking app, etc.
Possibly also correlating any of the above with facial recognition apps in the data mining centers of Facebook, Google, Apple, and of course, the NSA.
Oh, and any of the above that also have “cloud sync” features, and then sharing with other parent/subsidiary/sister companies to, again, “help you” connect with other
customers, er, people you encounter in life through any media.You did pay attention to those pages and pages of unreadably tiny fonts for the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies for each and every one of those apps, right?
@f00l @nhbillups TL;DR. We’re fucked.
@f00l @mike808 Well, ironically I write contracts for a living, so I usually do at least skim through all the tiny font lol.
But I didn’t have any apps on my new phone that I didn’t have on my old phone before my contacts started disappearing, so idk. I had a group of people that I met all in one place (say an online book club) that were on my old phone for a few years, but within a month of new phone, gone. And then that still doesn’t explain my work phone disappearing act either because I definitely didn’t sync my personal phone to work.
Definitely a mystery for me. So if any iPhone users out there have had this issue and can help me, please have mercy!
@f00l @mike808 @nhbillups My nasty, suspicious mind wonders if your ex has a device that’s still connected to your account.
How to check where you’re logged in, and what devices are on your account:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205064
Iphone 13 on the way!

@mike808 but it’s the same price.
@Ignorant @mike808
The joy of repeating the wallet suck!
@mike808 Thicker & heavier!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/the-iphone-13-is-thicker-and-heavier-than-the-iphone-12/
Might be battery bulk, which is always a good idea.
@blaineg Yes! What could possibly go wrong?
MOAR BATTERY!
Samsung:

/giphy vomit

How can this be? All the fanbois tell me that Apple is the most secure thing in the world.