An Apple snag could delete all contacts

Many people prefer Apple’s iPhone to Android phones for two reasons: The iPhone is simple to use and ultra-reliable. Android can sometimes be a little tricky if you’re not the most technically minded person. So, if you want simple contacts, iPhone is the way to go. But, the iPhone also has a huge danger area when it comes to questionable contacts management: iCloud.

iCloud will delete all the contacts on your iPhone if you make one wrong step in your iPhone’s settings. We discovered this recently when picking through the phone’s “settings” section, trying to figure out how to free up some space when suddenly... all the contact info just disappeared. Everyone — gone.

The problem with iCloud is that it works in such a counterintuitive way that even among Apple fans, people avoid using iCloud or don’t understand it. iCloud keeps a backup of all the data and files you want, but for contacts, it works slightly differently.

If you’ve got iCloud backup for your contacts switched on, your iPhone contacts are stored in iCloud, NOT on your phone. So if you switch that off, they all get deleted. Trust me, it’s a nightmare.

The good news is that your contacts come back if you switch iCloud back on again. But that only means your contacts are trapped inside iCloud — they’re not actually on your phone. And now you have to use iCloud if you want to keep your contacts.