Sent mail addresses get auto-saved to contacts (stock iOS Mail and Contacts app)

[learjet]

I've recently noticed a behavior where every email address I send (using the stock iOS Mail app) is being saved as a new contact in the Contacts app. These contacts only consist of the email address and nothing else. How can I prevent this from happening?

I suspect that "Siri suggestions" might be causing this issue. The entire mechanism seems somewhat unclear to me. Despite my belief that I had already disabled all relevant settings, it seems the behavior persists. Which Siri setting is responsible for automatically saving every sent email address to Contacts?

What's peculiar is that these automatically saved contacts appear in my "Google Contacts" list (I sync my contacts with Google Contacts), and not in a separate "Siri suggestions" contact list.

Can anyone else replicate this issue?

 

[MacCheetah3]

What's peculiar is that these automatically saved contacts appear in my "Google Contacts" list (I sync my contacts with Google Contacts), and not in a separate "Siri suggestions" contact list.

Are the messages being sent via Gmail? Maybe you have the wrong culprit.

Change who's saved & suggested as contacts - iPhone & iPad - Google Account Help

You'll see contacts suggested in some Google services, like when you start typing someone's name in a new email in Gmail. You can control who gets saved and suggested as a contact. Who shows up as su

support.google.com

I’m not seeing any specific mention of email addresses in Sent messages being auto-saved, but it’s worth checking into.

 

[ManuCH]

Outlook and Gmail both have such a feature. If you use any of those apps, you should look into that. The stock Mail app and Siri don't do that AFAIK.

 

[learjet]

Yeah, well, at first I had the same hunch, but I don‘t think so:

• Sent e-mail-addresses get saved by Gmail to some special “other” folder that doesn’t usually sync via CardDAV to iOS devices.
• These “dummy contacts” that I’m dealing with do only get saved locally and not appear in my online Google Contacts interface.
• If I’m deleting the whole local address book (e.g momentarily switching off “Contacts” in iOS Account Settings) and let it sync anew, only my online Google Contacts reappear. The “dummy contacts” are gone.

Hence I do believe iOS and/or Siri does some local shenanigans?