Why does TikTok say random people are from my contacts?

When TikTok says, “From your contacts,” but you don’t know them (foreign people), this glitch should seem strange to you as you may have never contacted or met them before.

In this article, we’ll explain why the app is showing unknown people from your contacts and in what ways you can resolve this annoying glitch.

Contents In This Article

Why does TikTok say from my contacts when they aren’t?

TikTok is randomly linking other accounts to your phone contacts.
You have granted TikTok access to your contacts list, and it is synced on your TikTok account.
The “Suggest Your Account to Others” feature is enabled on the suggested user’s account.

How do I fix the TikTok from your contacts glitch?

1. Delete Unknown Contacts

Your phone often saves contacts from your associated email account whom you don’t know. So when you log into TikTok and grant it permission to access your phone’s Contacts app, unknown people show up on the platform from your contact list. The best solution is to delete their phone number from your phonebook.

After you delete the phone number of the person from your contact list, refresh TikTok, and hopefully, the issue will be gone for good!

2. Disable Sync Contacts Settings

The second fix is to open your profile, go to “Settings and Privacy” > “Privacy,” Select “Sync Contacts and Facebook Friends,” and toggle off “Sync Contacts.” Then, choose “Remove Previously Synced Contacts” and tap “Remove.”

Once you do that, go to your TikTok profile, swipe down the screen to refresh the page, and check if it still suggests unknown people.

3. Deny Access to Contacts For TikTok

Another way to prevent TikTok from showing unknown people from your contacts is to deny the Contacts permission for the TikTok app on your Android or iPhone. Next up, refresh your profile page on the TikTok app and see if this worked.

NOTE: If other users have enabled the “Suggest Your Account to Others” option on their profile, there is not much you can do about it to stop TikTok from suggesting them from your contacts. However, you can request them to turn off this feature on their account.

4. Unlink Your Phone and Add an Email to Log In to TikTok

The next fix to resolve the problem is to unlink your phone number on TikTok and use your email as an alternative way to log into your account. Here’s how:

Open the TikTok app.
Tap “Menu” (At the top).
Tap “Settings and privacy.”
Select “Manage account.”
Tap “Email.”
Type in your email.
Tap “Send code.”
Type in the verification code sent to your email to add it to TikTok, and then head back to the “Manage account” option.
Tap “Phone number.”
Select “Unlink phone.”
Tap “Continue to unlink.”
Type in the verification code sent to your Android phone or iPhone, and you’re done!

Now force stop the TikTok app on your phone, relaunch it, and log in with your email address.

5. Make TikTok Account Private

A few TikTok users also managed to resolve this glitch by toggling on Private Account under TikTok’s Settings and Privacy option.

Takeaway

In this article, we’ve explained why TikTok says “From your contacts,” but you don’t know them, and how you can fix this glitch quickly.

Hopefully, you can now regain control over your TikTok account and won’t get unwanted people showing up on your account.