# Read-only contacts in Android
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 10, 2021, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715 "2021-04-10T01:08:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2021, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715/1 "2021-04-10T01:08:41Z")
My mom just got her first smartphone, and so naturally, she’s been consulting a lot with her personal tech support agent. This one, though, has me stumped. The phone automatically imported a bunch of contacts from her old flip phone, including some she had deleted long ago. No problem, right? I’ll just delete those.
“This contact is read-only, and cannot be deleted”
Well, OK, I go through and at least add the new contacts she wanted, and go home and Google the problem. It says to sign in to [contacts.google.com](http://contacts.google.com), and select the contacts to be deleted there. But when I do that, the ONLY contacts I see are the new ones I just added, without any of the old ones at all.
So how the heck do I access these old read-only contacts and delete them?
---
### Author:  [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2021, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715/2 "2021-04-10T01:18:48Z")
Was the SIM card transplanted directly from the old flip into the smartphone ? In older phones, it was pretty standard for contacts to be stored on the SIM card itself.
I don’t have experience with this situation, but if you google for “SIM Contacts Android” you can get instructions for hiding or erasing SIM-based contacts.
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2021, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715/3 "2021-04-10T12:59:48Z")
> [@Heracles](#):
>
> SIM Contacts Android
Googling for “SIM contacts Android” gives ways to import the contacts from the SIM card. This has apparently already been done, including importing contacts that were not wanted.
Googling for “SIM contacts Android read-only” just gives me the same results as before, with tips that didn’t work.
---
### Author:  [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2021, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/read-only-contacts-in-android/939715/4 "2021-04-10T16:46:19Z")
My top result seems to not involve [contacts.google.com](http://contacts.google.com), do these steps work for you?
> **[Deleting a read-only contact - Here's how | TechBone](https://www.techbone.net/android/deleting-read-only-contacts)**
>
> \Some contacts are double in your list, some of them wont be deleted even if you try a thousand times? The message "Contacts from your read-only accounts cannot be...