Social networking giant Facebook on last Monday changed the displayed default email address of all users on their profiles without warning. Users were surprised to see a new Facebook-provided e-mail address patterned after their profile URLs. A person who has the account facebook.com/johnsmith, for instance, now has an e-mail address consisting of “johnsmith@facebook.com.” Those who do not have customized URLs have random numbers instead of usernames in their new Facebook e-mail address.
Facebook has introduced its latest social media innovation – changing the email addresses posted by users on their profiles without giving its users any notification or warning. Facebook abruptly replaced the e-mail address of each user and replaced that e-mail address using “…@facebook.com”. Facebook allocated users an email address based on their profile URL, if they had elected to choose one. Users without a customized URL were instead issued with an email based on their profile name, with the addition of a few numbers. The Facebook email accounts allow users to communicate with outside email addresses via Facebook. However, emails sent to these “…@facebook.com” email addresses will be redirected as messages in the Facebook account’s message inbox, without an actual email notification to the email address associated with the account. It means that anyone who searches for you on Facebook and wanted to send an email will now only be able to see “…@facebook.com” – unless you manually revert. This means the email will come via Facebook messages instead of another account.
The new contact details are automatically displayed on users’ timelines, while the old email addresses were hidden. Besides, with the new contact details, users have to go through a number of stages to restore the previous details. Facebook has made no announcement to users about the changes, nor explained how to reverse them.
Facebook said in a statement: “As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site. In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the chance to decide which addresses they want to show on their timeline.” Besides, it also said, “Ever since the launch of timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own timelines, and today we’re extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address.”
While Facebook’s reasoning behind the change in email privacy sounds valid, it does now mean that users must spend a minute adjusting their security settings if they want their personal email addresses to appear on their profile pages again. Anyway, users who wish to reinstate their actual email addresses on their Facebook profile pages can follow these steps:
- Go to your timeline
- Click ‘About’
- Go to ‘Contact Info’ and click ‘edit’
- Check or uncheck the email addresses listed, depending on whether you want them publicly visible or not. A light grey circle means it’s visible on your timeline, a dark grey stop sign means it is hidden.
- Click ‘Save’ and you’re done.
Source : Forbes
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