2 iPhone households, be careful with iCloud

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
The wife and I have both been using iPhones for a couple years now. I get a new model and pass my older model on to her. I don't always buy the latest model, it just depends. So I've been using the 3GS about a year and decided to go with the new 4S. Bought the 4S at and Apple store and then went to a nearby AT&T store to do the SIM card dance. All appearded good. I enabled iCloud on both phones, without fully understanding what could happen. The wife and I both use my iTunes account for our periodic purchases and it turns out that iCloud uses that same account info. The wife complained about all my extra contacts she had now that she was using my old 3GS. She began deleting all those contacts that she didn't recognize or want. Well turns out when she deleted them on her phone, they were also deleted on my new 4S phone!!! Since iCloud was turned on for both and since iClould uses the Itunes account info, it was working to keep the contacts list the same on all my devices. Just a word of caution. Either create a new iTunes account for each user or disable iClould on one of the devices (which is what I've done for now).

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    You can have different iCloud accounts and still use the same iTunes Store account. I know because that's how we have it set up with my wife and my iPhone/iPad combos. Although I do believe they default to the same iCloud address so we did get some overlapped Calendar information.



    In any case, they can be separate so that you can share the iTunes account/music/apps and have separate personal info (contacts/cal/mail). You just have to enter the addresses separately in their respective areas in the settings app.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,617member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by admactanium View Post


    You can have different iCloud accounts and still use the same iTunes Store account. I know because that's how we have it set up with my wife and my iPhone/iPad combos. Although I do believe they default to the same iCloud address so we did get some overlapped Calendar information.



    In any case, they can be separate so that you can share the iTunes account/music/apps and have separate personal info (contacts/cal/mail). You just have to enter the addresses separately in their respective areas in the settings app.



    Yep, I can second that.



    I have 4 iPhones and 4 separate iCloud accounts but all of the phones share the one iTunes account.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    Apple could and should have done a better job of explaining this. My wife and I both got new iPhone 4S at the same time and it took me a little while to figure out how to keep things separate. Fortunately, I separated things before things got jumbled up and all is good.



    Then I went over to my parents' home in Korea while on a business trip and they both have the iPhone 4. I installed the iOS 5 and the iCloud on both of their phones and forgot that they were sharing the same iTunes account. Well, the exact same thing happened with their contacts and all of my father's contacts got deleted when my mother decided she didn't want his contacts showing on her phone. So my father had to manually re-enter around 200 contacts and they both said they'll only use their individual iTunes accounts from now on.



    Apple needs to educate the customers about this issue. I'm sure there are (and have been) many who've been silently cursing Apple for this. It's a strange oversight or smugness on Apple's part because an issue isn't enough for a customer to throw his or hear arms up in air and switch to an Android or anything like that, but it'll make us a lot more cautious about upgrading to new iOS versions and such in the future.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    And make sure you've turned off photo stream before you take dirty pictures of your secret girlfriend!
  • Reply 5 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tonton View Post


    And make sure you've turned off photo stream before you take dirty pictures of your secret girlfriend!



    So how's that divorce going?
  • Reply 6 of 7
    hey,willer.

    i have a little personal ,I installed the iOS 5 and the iCloud on both of their phones and forgot that they were sharing the same iTunes account.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    I do believe they default to the same iCloud address so we did get some overlapped Calendar information.
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