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My husband had his old iPhone (8?) in his drawer, it had been wiped clean. A week later I looked at it, and it had contacts on it . It had both very recent contacts, probably within the last month, but it also had what (he says) were the old contacts that were on that phone before we were a couple. Aka his ex listed under her pet name. He says because he won’t pay for more iPhone data it synced his old contacts when he logged it in to iCloud to supposedly find his Venmo password. It sounds like a lie to me.
Stop snooping in his stuff...
 
Stop snooping in his stuff...
Or get permission right? My wife knows my pin and I know her pin. I have no problem letting her see my phone and she hers. Married 9 years now and that hasn't changed. I mean, I'm not ever checking her phone but having that access is a great way to trust imo. That and if I ever kick the bucket unexpectedly, my wife knows how to access my 1Password/email/phone.
 
So, if I take a clean phone and tell him to log in to it with I cloud and watch it load up, it will not have that funky mix of contacts on it? So as to prove my point to him?
What point are you trying to prove?
Why are you snooping through his 'burner' phone?

This is real life, not a soap opera. Divorce him. There is no trust, there is no relationship. You are literally wasting your life ( the limited time you have on earth ) over this.

Leave, right now and not because he is possibly cheating on you, but because you do not trust him.
 
your situation is unknown but good for you. its ok to snoopp but it is a 2way street in that i think there was an earlier post about this knowledge eating you up.
 
Contacts are an area that icloud is well known for putting back old data from an older sync, especially if there’s an older backup that gets restored, etc. Restoring from an older backup is EXACTLY what you’d do if trying to get an older password, as well.

I think odd/old contact data is maybe the LEAST concerning thing you could find on a device, especially an unlocked device left in an easily accessible shared location.

Obviously, we have no insight into your larger situation, but I’ll agree with others who have said that suspicion and playing ‘gotcha’ games is at least as corrosive as cheating. People tend to pursue ‘gotchas’ as a way to justify their own upset and push away accountability for what they already know, which is that their relationship is in trouble.

If everything else is fantastic, then don’t worry about it and get on with your fantastic life.

If there’s other stuff that’s a problem, then work on fixing that or break up and move on.

Cheating is most often a symptom of a person or relationship in serious trouble, rather than the starting point for the trouble.
 
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Or get permission right? My wife knows my pin and I know her pin. I have no problem letting her see my phone and she hers. Married 9 years now and that hasn't changed. I mean, I'm not ever checking her phone but having that access is a great way to trust imo. That and if I ever kick the bucket unexpectedly, my wife knows how to access my 1Password/email/phone.
Pretty much, I have all of hers and she has all of mine, but not at all for snooping. Like you say, if I dropped dead right now, she'd be screwed if she didn't have access to my world. If I felt the need to snoop on her, I wouldn't have married her in the first place.

As far as OP goes, why were you looking through the phone in the first place? Was it nostalgia as in "oh, hey, I remember this old phone" or more like, "hey, what's he doing that I don't know about, let's just snoop". Here's my thoughts on that: if you have to snoop, the relationship is poop. Hey that was good, I literally just made that up, I think I missed my calling in life, maybe I should write fortune cookies or greeting cards.
 
I have contacts on my iPhone going back more than 25 years - exes, former work associates and suppliers/vendors, people I added for the sake of a single meeting on projects that never panned out, even the deceased... I don't delete contacts because you never know when you may need a contact again - if only so that the system can identify incoming communications from people I know and help identify the spammers. Some of those contacts have migrated been from the built-in Windows 95 contacts app to a third-party Windows-only Personal Information Manager app to Palm Pilot to a Mac-only Personal Information Manager and then to Apple's iOS/Mac Contacts app - I just migrate the entire accumulation to the next platform.

Not knowing the husband in this story I can only speculate, but if I created a contact for someone using their pet name, I would not later edit it to use their formal name out of fear that my current spouse/significant other would see that and jump to the conclusion that I still harbored warm feelings for the person. If I called that person "Bunny" or "Bobby" while the relationship was good, I wouldn't change it to "Veronica" or "Robert" when things cooled down - the difference would be whether I let an unexpected call from Bunny go to voicemail or whether I answered it.
 
My husband had his old iPhone (8?) in his drawer, it had been wiped clean. A week later I looked at it, and it had contacts on it . It had both very recent contacts, probably within the last month, but it also had what (he says) were the old contacts that were on that phone before we were a couple. Aka his ex listed under her pet name. He says because he won’t pay for more iPhone data it synced his old contacts when he logged it in to iCloud to supposedly find his Venmo password. It sounds like a lie to me.
No judgement, but this sounds like a very personal issue that you should discuss with your husband or a trusted friend or family member, not a group of anonymous strangers who are mainly here because we like talking about iPhones.
 
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Now you have created a big fat elephant sitting in your relationship, it must have been already somewhat broken. Then you join a techie forum and discuss it? Who does that? Professional help is the obvious answer to this sad situation.
 
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Sit his ass down and have a word with him, or it's time to hire a private investigator. 🧐

Or wait till apple release air tags, then slip one into his car and track him. 😜😂
Or, just login to his current phone and turn on "Find My". My wife and I have that turned on just in case something odd happens. (eg. I go for a trail run and don't come back in a normal time. She at least knows what trail I started on.)
 
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Don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way, but I’ve never gone through any significant other’s wallet, cellphone, etc. I’ve never felt the need to. I’m a firm believer that if you go looking for something like that, you’ll find out something that you wish you wouldn’t have, even if it wasn’t what you started out looking for. Without trust, there is no relationship; you’ll just end up with severe anxiety and/or anger issues.
 
If there are contacts on the old phone after being wiped and then reloaded that aren’t on his daily user phone as well then he added them recently after rebooting his account on it.
 
Don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way, but I’ve never gone through any significant other’s wallet, cellphone, etc. I’ve never felt the need to. I’m a firm believer that if you go looking for something like that, you’ll find out something that you wish you wouldn’t have, even if it wasn’t what you started out looking for. Without trust, there is no relationship; you’ll just end up with severe anxiety and/or anger issues.
This post makes way too much sense and has been reported for further review to the mods. :p

I agree. If you don't have trust in a relationship, you don't have a relationship.
 
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An old contact showing up is likely just part of the process he used (of course it could have been the primary reason he restored). If you must check further, I would look at call history and messages on all his phones.
 
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