Some of the apps that ask for access to your contacts don’t necessarily need the information.
Worse is that when you grant these apps access to your contacts, the data-sharing doesn’t always stop there. As time goes on, your contacts will begin to get mixed in the data economy, flowing from your phone to app-makers and third-party collectors.
Unfortunately, you can’t turn OFF contact sharing, and you can’t take back the contacts you’ve left accessible to apps. What you can do is learn how to unsync contacts on your apps to gain better control of your address book.
How to unsync Contacts from Snapchat
Suppose you have already synced your contacts with Snapchat. In that case, the app will frequently update your contacts list by re-syncing as frequently as possible. You can stop Snapchat from constantly syncing your contacts if you want to.
This step-by-step guide will show you how.
- STEP 1: Open Snapchat on your mobile phone and log in to your Snapchat profile.
- STEP 2: Tap on your profile picture hanging on the top-left corner of the screen.
- STEP 3: Click on the gear icon at the top-right corner.
- STEP 4: Scroll down till you get to the “Additional Services” section and click on “Manage.”
- STEP 5: Tap on “Contacts.”
- STEP 6: Uncheck the toggle box next to “Sync Contacts.”
- STEP 7: Click on “Confirm.”
How to Unsync Contacts from Facebook
You can follow these steps to learn how to unsyc contacts from Facebook.
How to unsync contacts from Facebook for Android users
- STEP 1: Open the Facebook app and log in to your profile.
- STEP 2: Tap the “Menu” button at the top right corner of the screen.
- STEP 3: Scroll down to “Settings & Privacy” and tap on Settings.
- STEP 4: Find the “Media and Contacts” option and tap on it.
- STEP 5: Lastly, disable “Continuous Contacts Upload” to finish the process.
How to unsync contacts from Facebook for iOS users
- STEP 1: Open the Facebook app and log in to your profile.
- STEP 2: Tap the “Menu” icon at the bottom right corner.
- STEP 3: Select “Settings“
- STEP 4: Under the Media and contacts option, tap “Upload Contacts.”
- STEP 5: Tap on “Upload Contacts” to turn it OFF.
How to Unsync Contacts from Instagram
- STEP 1: Open the Instagram app and go to your profile.
- STEP 2: Tap the menu icon in the top left corner and select “Settings.”
- STEP 3: Go to the “Account” section and tap on “Contact Syncing.”
- STEP 4: Turn off the “Connect contacts” toggle switch to stop contact syncing.
How to Unsync Contacts from WhatsApp
You can follow this guideline if you want to unsync contacts from your WhatsApp.
- STEP 1: Go to “Settings.”
- STEP 2: Scroll to “System settings.”
- STEP 3: Tap on “Accounts.”
- STEP 4: Navigate to “WhatsApp” and tap on it.
- STEP 5: Go to the “Contact Sync” section.
- STEP 6: Turn off the “Contact Sync” toggle switch to turn it OFF.
How to Unsync Contacts on Tiktok
To unsync your contacts on Tiktok:
- Launch the Tiktok app on your phone and log in to your account.
- Tap the profile icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
- Tap the three-dot icon in the top right to access your settings page.
- Click on “Settings and Privacy.”
- Tap on “Privacy” and click on “Sync contacts and Facebook friends.”
- Tap the toggle icon next to Sync contacts to turn OFF contact syncing.
How to Unsync Contacts in Samsung
You can follow these steps to unsync contacts on your Samsung phone.
- STEP 1: Go to your phone “Settings.”
- STEP 2: Tap the “Account and backup” option.
- STEP 3: Select your Google account and remove the “Sync contacts” option.
How to Unsync Contacts on Other Android phones
- Go to your phone “Settings.”
- Select “Accounts and Backup.”
- Tap on “Accounts.”
- Select “Sync Account.”
- Tap “Sync Contacts” to disable contact syncing.
How to Unsync Contacts Between Two iPhones
When you find out you are sharing the contacts on your iPhone with another iPhone, you can follow these steps to unsync the contacts.
- STEP 1: Go to “Settings” on your iPhone.
- STEP 2: Select Apple id or iCloud account.
- STEP 3: Find Contacts and scroll down to the devices connected.
- STEP 4: Tap on the info on the iPhone you want to stop sharing contacts with and tap on the remove button to start the process.
- STEP 5: You will get a pop-up message: “What would you like to do with the previous synced iCloud contacts on your iPhone?“.
- STEP 6: If you want to delete the contacts you didn’t enter manually on your iPhone, select “Delete from My iPhone.”
- STEP 7: If you want to keep the contacts, select “Keep on My iPhone” and manually delete the ones you don’t want.
Read also: What the Blue Dot Next to Contacts Mean on Android
How to Unsync Contacts on PayPal App
Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward procedure for unsyncing your contacts on the Paypal app. However, you can add, edit, or delete contacts from your PayPal address book.
Here is how to do either of these:
- · STEP 1: On the Paypal Home page, click on “Send & Request.”
- STEP 2: Click on the “More” tab at the top.
- STEP 3: Scroll to where it says “Create an invoice” and click on “Get Started.”
- STEP 4: Open the “Settings” drop-down menu and select the Address book.
- STEP 5: Select a contact and click on either the “Edit” or “Delete” options.
- STEP 6: If you want to add a new contact, click on “Add a new contact.”
How to Unsync Contacts from Google
If you want to learn how to stop Google contacts from automatically syncing, you can follow these steps:
- STEP 1: Open the “Settings” on your phone.
- STEP 2: Tap on Google and go to where you have “Settings for Google apps.”
- STEP 3: Find “Google Contacts sync” and click on it.
- STEP 4: Tap on “Status” and turn off “Automatically sync.”
Conclusion
If you want to stop the spread of your data to third-party apps, you can follow the procedures in this article.
Take note that while you may not be able to refuse to grant these third-party apps access to your contacts, you can control how much of your data they get.
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