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All my private data deleted !

tony61

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Hello, I wanted to submit to the max number of users a terrible experience I just had with my ipad. I created fake contacts to keep all of my personal information, for example one contact for each bank (with pins, passwords etc... To access the accounts), a contact for linkedin with my password, a contact for easyjet accont with my password, a contact for dropbox, etc...
A bad day i discovered that I was missing a bank account info. i checked and i discovered that all of these "fake" but mostly important contacts had disappeared !! Now, I cold have done an incautious deletion for one ofnthese items, not for all of them ! I have even thought about hakers stealing my personal information.
My banks accounts have not been accessed. The thing is, now i have ti retrieve from somewhere else all of this info, or create new accounts, etc...
Even more, how can I still trust the ipad as a safe storage of info ?
Note that all of the normal contacts (people and tel numbers) are still there.
Any idea about what has happened ? Also note that in my contact page had appeared a label "groups" I did not know why, and what it means.
Thank you
Antonio
 

blackice

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Tap the groups button and see if you were looking at all of your contacts or just the ones associated with one email account
 
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tony61

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I should have written that already, sorry. I did already and the result was that all my contacts are associated with 1 of my 2 mail acounts. The other has no contact at all.
 

leelai

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I've moved your thread to our Help Section where you will receive a better response.

Please do not post duplicates of your issue as well as dividing any info given it is also against Forum Rules, your other posts have now been deleted.
 
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tony61

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Thank you for helping with my thread. I would add that the reason why I had inserted all of my private data as contacts was that I did (do ?) not fully btrust password applications .... Am I the only one ? Also, having them as contacts allowed me to easily find them and also to quickly copy and past long usernames and pins from the contact to the web....
I wonder what people do usually, the ipad was for me key solution in managing all of my private data, tons of usernames, pins and passwords for lots of websites
Tony
 

Bosvaark

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tony61 said:
Thank you for helping with my thread. I would add that the reason why I had inserted all of my private data as contacts was that I did (do ?) not fully btrust password applications .... Am I the only one ? Also, having them as contacts allowed me to easily find them and also to quickly copy and past long usernames and pins from the contact to the web....
I wonder what people do usually, the ipad was for me key solution in managing all of my private data, tons of usernames, pins and passwords for lots of websites
Tony

Been using password managers for over 10 years, I recommend DataVault as it works cross platform (pc,Mac,android, iOS )
Would never use anything that is plain text with no encryption like you have, if your iPad falls in the wrong hands what then?
Spotlight search will reveal plain text passwords in contacts.
 
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tony61

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Right, on the other hand inserting all of your data in an app isn't like delivering all your data to the creators of that app ?
 

Bosvaark

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tony61 said:
Right, on the other hand inserting all of your data in an app isn't like delivering all your data to the creators of that app ?

Hmm, Making a statement like this is simply proving your lack of software/computer knowledge -;)
 

Kaykaykay

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Right, on the other hand inserting all of your data in an app isn't like delivering all your data to the creators of that app ?

Not quite, but it's a question worth asking.

Depending on what kind of service you're using, you can store info on your device or providers' servers. Best to use encrypted services, of course. And I wouldn't put my passwords in a standard Dropbox file, for instance.

Maybe this general overview will help shed light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_manager
 
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skimonkey

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Hmm, Making a statement like this is simply proving your lack of software/computer knowledge -;)

..What does that have to do with what the OP is asking? That's why he's asking the question to gain help from others.
 
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skimonkey

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Not quite, but it's a question worth asking.

Depending on what kind of service you're using, you can store info on your device or providers' servers. Best to use encrypted services, of course. And I wouldn't put my passwords in a standard Dropbox file, for instance.

Maybe this general overview will help shed light:

Password manager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Very good clarification and helping the OP sort things out.

Thank you, Kaykaykay.
 
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tony61

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Kaykaykay said:
Not quite, but it's a question worth asking.

Depending on what kind of service you're using, you can store info on your device or providers' servers. Best to use encrypted services, of course. And I wouldn't put my passwords in a standard Dropbox file, for instance.

Maybe this general overview will help shed light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_manager

Thanks Kaykaykay. I understand the difference between storing info on an app running locally on my device and storing info on providers' servers. I , too, use dropbox to store some of my files but not a file containing my passwords. But how can you be 100% sure that a specific app supposed to run locally is really running ONLY locally ? I mean .... Even proposals of upgrading my apps reaching me all the times make me think that no app is really ISOLATED locally ...
Maybe I am just too concerned
This is a side of the issue I posted
The other still lingers in my mind: How could the ipad delete all these fake contacts I created to store my passwords, All together, and only those ? My take: a bug in the contacts app, hitting those contacts which have been twiked a lot (as I did) to store info which has nothing to do with tel number or addresses, which is what the app was born for.
 

followthesapper

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Try this:

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
3. Tap on the account in question (the account that has lost the contacts)
4. Slide sync control for “contacts” to Off.
5. Tap "Deleted from . . . ."
6. Power Off the iPad [Press and hold the top power button]
7. Power On the iPad [Press and hold the top power button until the Apple symbol appears]
8. Tap Settings
9. Tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
10. Tap on the account in question

11. Slide sync control for “contacts” to On

See if the contacts have been restored.
 

Kaykaykay

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Thanks Kaykaykay. I understand the difference between storing info on an app running locally on my device and storing info on providers' servers. I , too, use dropbox to store some of my files but not a file containing my passwords. But how can you be 100% sure that a specific app supposed to run locally is really running ONLY locally ? I mean .... Even proposals of upgrading my apps reaching me all the times make me think that no app is really ISOLATED locally ...
Maybe I am just too concerned
This is a side of the issue I posted
The other still lingers in my mind: How could the ipad delete all these fake contacts I created to store my passwords, All together, and only those ? My take: a bug in the contacts app, hitting those contacts which have been twiked a lot (as I did) to store info which has nothing to do with tel number or addresses, which is what the app was born for.


We can't actually be 100 percent sure of anything but death and taxes, as the saying goes.

Even password managers can be broken:

Security Fail: Apple iOS Password Managers - Security - Encryption - Informationweek

And scammers also can infect you with a bug that logs your keystrokes, even if you store locally:

Keystroke logging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For your own peace of mind, you should use what seems most secure to you, after reading up a bit. At least that's what I'd suggest.

As for what happened to your contacts entries, that's a hard guess, not knowing what you did.
 
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tony61

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followthesapper said:
Try this:

1. Tap Settings
2. Tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
3. Tap on the account in question (the account that has lost the contacts)
4. Slide sync control for “contacts” to Off.
5. Tap "Deleted from . . . ."
6. Power Off the iPad [Press and hold the top power button]
7. Power On the iPad [Press and hold the top power button until the Apple symbol appears]
8. Tap Settings
9. Tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
10. Tap on the account in question

11. Slide sync control for “contacts” to On

See if the contacts have been restored.


Hi and thank you for the good suggestion. That's interesting, see what happened:
I did 1 and 2
I have 3 accounts, 2 yahoo and a gmail
I could do what you say for the yahoo accounts, as i see the "contacts"
I cannot do it for the gmail account as the "contacts" option is simply NOT THERE. Why I don' know. But I guess this is the problem. I have probably created the faked contacts as part of the gmail account (not on purpose). Or the system for some reason has associated these contacts with the gmail account later. At the time I did not even know that the contacts are associated with an account: after all if I create a contact why does it have to end up associated with an account ?
And now the contacts have completely disappeared from the gmail account, even as an option .... !
Any suggestion how to bring the option back ?
 

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