How to clean up your iPhone’s contact list during one pass

Q. I would really like to clean up the contacts in my iPhone. The only way I know how to do it involves opening each contact and deleting them one by one. Is there a way or program to somehow mass delete them?

A. The iPhone stores contacts online in your various accounts.

The best way I have found to manage contacts on my iPhone is to go to the web interfaces for my accounts and edit them there.

If you go to icloud.com and sign in with your Apple ID and then click on contacts, you will see all of the contacts that Apple has stored for you.

From here you can select all the contacts you wish to remove and then click on the gear icon in the lower left corner and select delete.

If you have a Gmail account, you can go to contacts.google.com and sign in with your Google account and select the contacts you want to remove. Just highlight the ones you don’t want and then click on the three dots above the list and select delete.

If you have another email account connected to your phone, you will likely want to check the web interface for that service and see if you have any contacts stored there.

Q. I was browsing the web and had a pop-up on my screen informing me that Windows Defender had detected a Trojan horse that infected my computer. My machine was indeed frozen. Further instructions indicated that the problem could be resolved by calling Microsoft at a number provided on the popup. I suspect my computer had been hacked. Is the phone number a legitimate Microsoft number? Why didn’t my McAfee find the problem and correct it?

A. What you experienced is a common scam designed to trick you into thinking your computer has a problem.

In many cases, the pop-up will actually make it seem as though your computer has frozen, which makes it even more convincing.

The number presented is not a Microsoft number; it is the number of the scammers trying to defraud you. If you were to call that number, the scammers would try to convince you to pay money to fix the so-called problem.

The quickest way to fix this is to simply power off your computer and restart it. The computer will be magically unfrozen and the pop-up will be gone.

To prevent this from happening again, I recommend installing a pop-up blocker for your browsers. Something like AdBlock Pro or similar should help with these kinds of fake alerts.

But if you ever see one again, you should never call the number. If you suspect there is a problem, please contact a reputable technician.