Facebook email ‘bug’ affects smartphone users
KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 – A new email setting introduced by Facebook has affected several smartphone users using contact-sync devices, such as Android, BlackBerry and iOS 6 devices as it changes their default email address to @facebook.com.
The social network is known to make changes to the layout, privacy and account settings, often sparking outrage from users who were not informed of the change beforehand.
Instead of using their usual email addresses, the emails sent out to their contacts uses the @facebook.com address. Important emails are missed by recipients because the messages are going into other email folders.
After several news reports were published, Facebook confirmed on Monday that the issue is real. According to Facebook, “... it was caused by a bug in the contact-sync system for some phones.”
“We are in the process of fixing this issue and it will be resolved soon. After that, those specific devices should pull the correct addresses,” said a spokesperson from the social network company.
A report by CNNMoney said US resident David Thomas who owns an HTC Incredible contacted the news portal about the issue. Thomas was quoted as saying that he didn’t mind the @facebook.com change on Facebook’s site but the issue on his smartphone upset him.
“Talk about an invasion of privacy,” Thomas wrote. “I don’t want to write to people’s Facebook email address... they probably don’t know they have one.”
According to Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, “I believe the site was trying to get more people to adopt @facebook.com email addresses for their regular communications, to make their dependence on Facebook even greater. But they’ve ended up with more disgruntled users, who will be wary of the next time Facebook changes things without proper notification and without thinking of the repercussions.”
If you don’t want your @facebook.com email address to be displayed on your profile (and don’t want it to be synced to friends’ smartphones), you should change your settings.
Click on the “About” tab on your profile. Go to the section marked “Contact info” and choose “Edit”.
Adjust the settings to choose which – if any – of your email addresses (including the new @facebook.com email address that you have been given) you would like to appear on your timeline, and who has the rights to see it.
Press “Save”.
