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Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

Martin an gof Silver badge

Then how come just about the only way to transfer your contacts from an old iPhone to a new one is via the cloud?

Ditto other brands. All your contacts being uploaded to GMail. Or to LinkedIn.

In Android you have the option of, Contacts... Import/Export... Export to .vcf file... select all... Save. This puts all your contacts in a file on your local storage from where you can upload them into your computer (useful also for backup), or simply send them directly via Bluetooth to another phone.

If you are going to do the latter then under the Import/Export menu there's another option "Share All Contacts". Again, select all, then choose how. My phone offers to share via Messaging, KDE Connect or Bluetooth.

I've done this a couple of times recently, for example when un-borking my phone which was on an older version of Cyanogenmod and needed (essentially) wiping to install the latest LineageOS. Eldest son had a few more problems migrating from an old Nokia dumphone to a newer smartphone, but only because the Nokia couldn't save a .vcf file or send more than one contact at once. Instead he sent each of his 30-odd contacts individually, which also gave him the opportunity to prune old or duplicate entries.

In neither case did the contacts ever leave the privacy of our own house.

As an aside, when setting up new phone with eldest son, 90% of the setup (and disabling of certain things) was done before the SIM was inserted. Yes, WiFi was active, but maybe this step helped prevent a certain amount of data leakage.

M.

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