What causes iPhone to lose all contacts, and how can I stop it happening again?

iPhone 3gs, still running 5.1.1 because I actually rely on the mapping software.
A few days back, it started randomly exiting various apps for no reason. Today, I tried powering off and re-starting, but when it re-started it had erased all contacts.
Last backup was a couple days before, so I won't have lost anything crucial, but this is the first such disaster since bying the phone 3 years ago. I see numerous complaints about this, and no real solution or explanation offered from Apple. I figure it's about time to replace my phone, so this will be a test: either there will be a clear explanation and a solution, or I'll switch to Android.

What are you syncing them WITH? Do NOT say iTunes. iTunes is NOT a contact manager.
If you're syncing them with your computer, your choices are MS Outlook or Windows Address Book on a PC, and Contacts / Address Book on a Mac.
If you are not syncing your contacts with a contact manager or cloud service, you are NOT syncing your contacts.
See this document: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4946
Particularly this item and disclaimer:
Contacts* and Contact Favorites (regularly sync contacts to a computer or cloud service such as iCloud to back them up).
* Your contacts are part of the backup to preserve recent calls and favorites lists. Back up your contacts to a supported personal information manager (PIM), iCloud, or another cloud-based service to avoid any potential contact data loss.

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My husband and I share an Itunes account so use the same email address and password. Our iphones are now connected and we get each other's messages and share each other's contacts. How can we stop this happening?

A couple of different approached:
Create a second AppleID for one of you that includes the email address and phone number you wish to use for messaging, but do not apply it to the iTunes and app store (just keep the current one). My wife and I do this and it works quite well. Also allows for easier syncing of Contacts , notes etc. using icloud if you wish to do that.
Add additional emails/phone numbers to the existing account and change the Send/Receive settings for Messages. this will not fix the Contcts isues for you however.

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See if this article will help:
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i have update and restore my wife iphone to 7.0.4 and i lost all the data what to do now? all contacts and kids photos goooone , we have the same apple ID and when i tried to restore from i cloude , i restored my contacts not her???!!!!!

Looks like you restored your backup file to her phone. If you didn't back up your wife's phone first, then the data is gone, sorry.

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I synced (updated) my iphone to itunes and some songs were deleted from my iphone playlist on my phone. On the computer, a circle is next to the song and the title faded out. What the heck is that all about and how do I get my songs back onto my phone playlist? Never happened before. My software is up to date?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519

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Is it possible for your iphone to be hacked?so that someone can text message people in your contacts (and send pictures)? If so can you trace the hack and how can you stop it?

As has been said, the iPhone itself can't be hacked this way, as far as anyone currently knows.
Your Apple ID is another story. Any kind of online accounts can be hacked, and Apple IDs are no exception. If someone hacks your Apple ID, they could see all the data in the associated iCloud account, such as contacts, and could send those contacts texts that would appear to come from you. If that were to happen, you should see an alert on your other devices that your Apple ID is being used with Messages on a new device.
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Better privecy does not work with windows vista home prem. what other program removes LSO'S AND HOW can I stop trackers?

Question
better privacy does not work with windows vista home prem. what other program removes LSO'S AND HOW can I stop trackers? edit
Details

As a temporary workaround, I believe this Adobe management page allows you to clear your "Flash cookies": [http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager - Website Storage Settings panel] (hosted on macromedia.com -- Macromedia was the original developer of Flash).
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What causes iPhone to lose all contacts, and how can I stop it happening again?

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