Bloody IOS6 has deleted my contacts

[SheilaWheeler]

I foolishly installed IOS6 on my iphone 4 this morning and all my contacts have disappeared. It is my son's old phone so I now, miraculously, have all his contacts but none of my own. He doesn't have mine but when I delete one of his from my phone it deletes on his as well.

I've tried syncing with itunes, turning everything off then on again. I've googled it and tried at least 5 of their suggestions. All to no avail.

HELP! Someone, please

[12thmonkey]

it looks like the phone is still registered under your sons apple ID.

When you install an iOS or reset your phone you have an option to do 'as new' or restore from cloud, you must have chosen the cloud option and seeing as its your sons phone and it will take all his contacts, any existing on the phone will be removed. All devices sync via this apple id, so deleting on your phone will delete via icloud on all devices.

if you go to settings and chose icloud it will show you who's apple id the phone is connected to, and what is being synced ie contact, calender events etc.

You need to reset your phone and do it as new. under settings>general>reset
once you do this during reset you will be asked to reset as new or icloud, chose the new option and enter your own apple id, if you do not have one then you can create one there and then, there is no cost. This will make the phone yours. Then once you do this you will need to make sure that the itunes you use is for your apple id, if you share your computer make sure you sign in and out of itunes when you are using it.

[SheilaWheeler]

That makes sense, thankyou. The idea of resetting is a bit daunting - I'll just have to take a derp breath and go for it.

Thankyou so much

[12thmonkey]

a great thing about apple devices is their simplicty, when you reset you are asked only four questions, appleID, use Siri, use Icloud, restore as new. Thats it. Either way your contacts will be lost so there is no harm in trying.