Old contacts re-appearing.

SpiderWebb

Does anyone know the mechanism for this and why it has happened? I have recently had numerous previously lost contacts just appear years after they were lost. I have not knowingly been anywhere near anything Goggle for years.

SpiderWebb

Just trying to get an answer to this......I now have contacts in my list that I have not seen for years- several phones and several operating systems ago, it is years since I had any gargle on my phone, this is my third Gos phone, before that were several de-gargled Lineageos phones. These contacts have reappeared in the last few weeks. Does anyone know how this could have happened?

DeletedUser29

SpiderWebb Off the cuff the only contact syncing I know of is:

Syncing through Google's backup service or similar
Storing in the SIM-card
Manual export of contacts

Have you fiddled with anything related to those recently? Or has there been an update to any phone/contacts apps you use?

Eirikr70

They were missing you ! /s

OfflinePuffin

What contacts app do you use? Also I agree with ev6x's sim idea that seems to be one way contacts most likly persist

SpiderWebb

I use the standard Graphene contacts app. I have not carried out any backup or restore activities since I started using this phone last October. There has not been any 'fiddling' - I don't experiment and have no programming knowledge, I just use it as a phone. There is a possibility that the sim was in an old phone but that would have been last year. The sim seems to be the only possibility. Thanks very much for your replies.

DeletedUser29

SpiderWebb There has not been any 'fiddling'

My bad, poor phrasing. What I meant was if you've changed any settings related to the apps, accounts or similar at the time the old contacts appeared.

But if you have not done any of that, use the default apps and you're not logged into any Google account then that only really leaves the SIM-card as far as I know.

SpiderWebb Do you think that there is a routine built into the contacts app that decides to check the sim and sync periodically?

No idea honestly. I'll try and dig around (because this has me curious) but I if so one would have expected this to happen when you put in the SIM-card.

Only other thing I can think of is that seems plausible is that you can filter what contacts to display, so maybe they were just hidden before?

SpiderWebb

I have definitely never logged on to any syncing service or any cloud. Do you think that there is a routine built into the contacts app that decides to check the sim and sync periodically?

Dan-cer

This also happened to me recently. For years I haven't used the Google account for contacts, and all of a sudden - I think when I set up the calendar - fragments reappear in form of group folders. I don't think it's because of GrapheneOS. Eirikr7 wrote that the contacts miss you. It's more likely that the Google octopus keeps stretching out its tentacles, "missing" you.

OfflinePuffin

Do you have an esim?

Dan-cer

OfflinePuffin Do you have an esim?

If you ask me: Yes.

SpiderWebb

I don't have an esim.

SpiderWebb

Thank you for your input on this. In conclusion: very old contacts appeared several months after putting sim in new phone with no discernable 'fiddling'. Not all old contacts reappeared. No 'dead' contacts appeared ie: known disused numbers. No known goggel anything has been used on any of at least 4 previous phones over several years - barring microg several years ago on Lineageos.
Could phone network cross reference phone numbers and insert into contacts to be 'helpful'?

de0u

SpiderWebb Is it confirmed that the SIM card contains zero contacts?

SpiderWebb

Just double-checked. New network provider and new physical sim in new Pixel7 with Gos from day 1 in October 23. New contacts appeared this year. 100% not sim.