Facebook Changes Users’ Default Email to @Facebook.com Address

DigitalTrends

Facebook has changed all of its users’ default email to an @facebook.com address without asking.

In today’s edition of innocuous Facebook scandals, Ars Technica reports that the social network just up and changed everybody’s many users’ default email address to their (probably forgotten-about) @facebook.com email address. Shocking, I know. Sometimes the truth is hard to handle.

Update: Some commenters have noted that their accounts have not yet been affected by the change. I’ve updated the language to reflect this — though it seems likely that the email change-up will be implemented across all accounts soon.

The change, first uncovered by hacker Gervase Markham, means that any email messages you received through Facebook since Friday have been routed back into the Facebook Messages inbox, rather than into your email inbox. Annoying? Perhaps. Something to get really angry about? Perhaps — maybe you were expecting some highly time sensitive email to come through Facebook. But for the most part, we’d guess that people are more shocked that they have an @facebook email address than the fact that Facebook pulled a switcharoo.

Fortunately, switching back to your old email is easy. Gizmodo has the instructions here, but you can probably figure it out without reading a how-to guide.

The fact that Facebook did this without asking its users what they want doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Facebook does this kind of stuff all the time. And even when it gives users fair warnings about changes, they still flip their lids, wig out, and have a bloody conniption all over the Web. In fact, Facebook did give users warning (kind of) — all the way back in April. At at least one member of the DT staff received an email on Friday noting the change, though my email setting was changed without noticed.