My Daughter started deleting contacts without asking me first...which proceeded to delete them all from my phone as they synced via the cloud . Do you know of a way to get them back?

Question

My daughter got an ipod and we set it up using my itunes account and icloud. Unfortunatley all my contacts transfered across to her ipod and before asking me she deleted them all which in turn has deleted from my i phone. Is there any way I can get them back?

Answer 1

Unfortunately there's no way to get back the contacts you deleted unless he backed them up somewhere else.  He'll just have to recreate them.  This happened because you are both syncing contacts with a shared iCloud account.  When you do this, the synced data is merged and any actions you take on one phone (such as deleting contacts) is also reflected on the other.  To fix this you both need to have separate iCloud accounts (you can continue to share the same Apple ID for purchasing from the iTunes and app stores).  To do this, on your phone go to Settings>iCloud and turn all data that is syncing with iCloud (contacts, calendars, etc.) to Off.  When prompted choose to keep the data on the iPhone.  After everything is turned off, scroll to the bottom and tap Delete Account.  (This will only delete the account from this phone, not from iCloud.  The other phone will not be effected by this.)  Next, set up a new iCloud account on your phone using a different Apple ID and turn iCloud data syncing for contacts, etc. back to On.  When prompted, choose Merge.  This will upload your data to your new account.  At this point you will have two different iCloud accounts, one for each phone, with identical data on them.
You will then have to go to icloud.com on your computer and sign into each iCloud account separately and manually delete the unwanted data (such as deleting the your husband's contacts from your account, and vice versa).  These changes will be reflected on each phone.  When finished you will have individual iCloud accounts with just your own data on them.