Restaurant owner woke up to find that all her contact data had disappeared, only to be replaced by numbers from another user. -DigitalOne
SINGAPORE - Could iPhone users be at risk of identity switcheroos particularly when they make use of cloud services or backup services?
Restaurant owner Mrs Li, 32, woke up one day to find that all her iPhone contacts had disappeared into the thin air.
In their place? 19 unfamiliar messages that were all written in Chinese by a Mr Yang to inform different people of a change in his mobile number.
Mrs Li then called the number and discovered that her contacts had ended up in Mr Yang's iPhone. Both had declined to give their full names.
This bizarre incident took place on April 18, according to news reports. Both users don't even subscribe to the same telcos. Mrs Li is with SingTel while Mr Yang is with StarHub.
But there is a common factor. Both had upgraded the operating systems (OSes) of their iPhones recently, the reports said.
Mrs Li upgraded her OS about two weeks ago. After she did so, about 100 unfamilar contacts appeared on her phone. She was surprised but she still deleted them.
According to The Straits Times, Mr Yang, 40, bought his iPhone 4 last July. He upgraded his phone OS to iOS5, the latest OS, at around end-2011. The new OS has a free service called iCloud, which lets users upload their phones' contents online and share them with multiple devices.
Mr Yang's iPhone was fine after the upgrade. The trouble only started when he changed his mobile number on April 12.
Mr Yang claimed that he has never met Mrs Li.
SingTel and StarHub have since contacted the two parties and reported the issue to Apple, the report said.
Neither telcos have came across such cases, the report added.
StarHub has approached Mr Yang to offer its assistance. A SingTel spokesman said that the Apple support team is currently following up with Mrs Li to resolve the issue.