Contacts

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Getting your existing contacts on your new phone is helpful for a smooth transition. However, there are a few things to be aware of.

vCard files (.vcf) can be used to directly import a complete contact list / address book.

Privacy Concerns

Contacts form a sensitive data point on users. By processing this data, it is possible to identify users and their connections to others.

If you are using your same SIM service, your cellular service provider will have a new record of texts/calls made from this phone and can see that you're contacting the same people. We suggest that everyone eventually move to communicating exclusively through encrypted communications services. Consider communicating with your friends & family to opt for private communication platforms too, like what an Above Phone and Above Privacy Suite offers.

Some apps (like Telegram & Signal) will request access to your contacts. Even if you are using a new SIM card and a new account on these applications, your contacts can be used to identify who you are.

Be careful before giving apps access to your contacts.

Also note that the Above Phone offers you the Contact Scopes feature, which allows to define which specific contacts an app is able to access, while keeping all the others hidden from it. Apart from that, with user profiles, work profiles and 'Private Space' it is possible to set up a whole separate environment altogether, which also has its completely separate contacts storage partition.