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July 2, 2012

Facebook’s unannounced email switch causes users to lose emails

Last week’s change results in user backlash

By Tineka Smith

Facebook homepage

Facebook angered its members last week by changing user email addresses to a @facebook.com email address. The switch, made without user permission, is causing many to lose unknown amounts of emails as well as altering address books.

The social network, however, said it is giving users a choice to pick which address they want to use.

"In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines," said a Facebook spokesperson.

However, many Facebook members have started to notice lost emails and altered address books after the network changed them without permission.

Users are complaining mobile and personal devices that synchronise address books with their Facebook contacts have been altered and personal emails are being lost or sent elsewhere.

One Adobe employee wrote in a personal blog about how a co-worker sent her an email only to have it sent to her new Facebook address. The email, however, never reached her Facebook account.

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"Today, a co-worker discovered that his contact info for me had been silently updated to overwrite my work e-mail address with my Facebook e-mail address," wrote Rachel Luxembourg. "He discovered this only after sending work emails to the wrong address. And even worse, the e-mails are not actually in my Facebook messages. I checked. They’ve vanished into the ether."

Luxemburg also points out that the glitch is still happening even though she changed her email address to her previous one.

To change your email address back to your previous one click on the about section in your timeline, under contact info select edit, click on your preferred email and click save when finished.

Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.

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