Why were my contacts synced to my mother's iPhone?
I have recently downloaded the new software on my iphone, iOS 6. My mother and my sister also use my Apple ID to download their apps too.
Today my mother downloaded iOS 6 and all of my contacts were transfered to her iPhone. I would like to know how to remove my contacts from her device. I already tried logging out of my Apple ID from her device but all my contacts are still on her device.
Sharing a single Apple Id can save you money when downloading apps or music, but can cause confusion when attempting to use other Apple services associated with your Apple Id. In this particular instance I would venture your contact showed up on your mom's phone because she signed into iCloud with your Apple Id. By default iCloud syncs a lot of information:
- Contacts
- Calendars
- Reminders
- Safari
- Passbook
- Photo Stream
- Documents and Data
- Find My iPhone
If you go to Settings > iCloud you can toggle these services to on or off. Unfortunately, what I don't know is if toggling contacts off will remove the already synced contacts.
About a year ago I asked the question: how many Apple IDs should one household have? This spawned a lot of great answers and I definitely recommend reading it. To summarize it's okay to use the one account for purchases, but I would recommend having additional accounts for iCloud, Facetime etc.
There is a workaround that involves creating fake exchange account but I would recommend just setup them their own apple IDs (it's free anyway), restore while registering with iCloud with their IDs and use you ID for App Store if you must to.