Facebook Just Changed Your Email Without Asking—Here’s How to Fix It (Updated)

Hey, here's something really stupid and annoying: Facebook abruptly switched everyone's default email address to the

@facebook.com account you've never used. Here's how to switch back Facebook's obnoxious overreach right now. So people can actually, you know, contact you.

Remember long, long ago, when Facebook launched a Facebook email system and then nobody used it? That's fine—it was always just an option you were more than welcome to completely ignore. And we did, because we already had Gmail and work inboxes, and didn't need yet another. If our friends wanted to email us, they could just head to our profiles and have options.

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Not today! If you go to your profile (or anyone else's), you'll see the @facebook.com email account listed—which just forwards to your Facebook messages inbox—and none of your others. They've all been hidden in a ham-handed attempt to make the Facebook inbox relevant.

Luckily, it's easy to reverse this foolish move. Go to your Timeline. Click about, under your contact info. Scroll down to "Contact Info" and hit edit. Switch all of the crossed out circle symbols to a full circle for each inbox you want visible on your profile. If you don't want @facebook.com to show up, switch it from a full circle ("Shown on Timeline") to crossed out ("Hidden from Timeline"). This is also a good opportunity to check your privacy settings and make sure your various inboxes are visible only to friendlies. Hit save.

Facebook: don't do this again. [Forbes]

Update: A Facebook spokesperson provided the following non-explanation to Reuters:

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 choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines.

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.

Facebook, it's probably safe to say that the way we all had our things before was the "choice" we made about "which addresses...show on [our] timelines." This wasn't about choice—in fact, it was the opposite. You chose for us.

And this why everyone should switch to G+. If Google makes a change, its not defaulted to be open to the damn world. The default is always secure and you can opt in to show yourself off.

FB is just worse in every way.

While I wouldn't switch to G+, I do agree that Facebook is pretty bad in matters like these

Why no G+?

It has better phone integration, better controls over privacy, circles are easily the best friend control, easier sharing of info, unlimited photo/video storage, etc...

To put it bluntly: I just want Gmail and Adsense from them, and considering I have both of those on the same google account, I'm perfectly content. (Plus, everyone already uses Facebook(:/), so it'd be pretty hopeless to switch for social networking reasons.

I don't even have a valid email linked to my FB account so this doesn't really affect me if this new email just goes to PM.

In fact... looking at it now I barely have any true personal details on there. Apart from a list of friends (which you can only see if you are my friend) I think you could find out more about me through my VGC profile.

I did have to set up a 2nd FB account so I could create my 4th Spotify account... I must have linked that to an email I don't use anymore as I don't think it would have accepted my invalid one (also had to link it to a mobile phone for some daft reason... luckily I had an old spare sim card or two lying around)

Actually that's another thing, Google account keeps pissing me off trying to get me to link a mobile number for "security reasons"... I must have clicked "skip" a dozen times by now, you'd think they would get the hint.

Also, FB is going to push for locate-your-friend feature.
If you've been using FB app on your mobile, you'd notice how it always switch on your gps? It's been tracking you.

Actually, that 'feature' was removed today.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/facebook-quietly-releases-find-friends-nearby-then-quietly-pulls-it/

While your argument can be applied to almost every FB update, and I see you were quite quick to paste it in here, that's not actually the conern of this article.

They switched your "this is my email, you can contact me here" address under your profile info to their proprietary facebook email they gave you. If anything, they just hid everyone's true email address in essence giving people more security.

I know... strange... But I guess I don't mind.

True, you can look at it that way. However, I look at it as publically displaying a path to contact you that I didn't want and I should have been able to opt-in vs opt-out by default. Though it is good that it is just the FB email account which probably is just your messages or something. But it should be public by default.