It wasn’t enough fun for Facebook to change users’ default email addresses to its own “@facebook.com” addresses, nope. The contact snafu moved beyond the confines of the social network, with users reporting over the weekend that since their phones sync up with Facebook accounts, contact information in address books also switched to @facebook.com addresses.

The social network said today it’s investigating reports that the @facebook.com debacle also altered users’ contact lists.

“Regarding the phone syncing issue, we’re having the engineers look into it and will get back to you as soon as we can with more details,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement, via PCMag.com.

No one was alerted beforehand that the email address switch would happen, although Facebook claims it was part of larger changes it told users about in April, regarding new URLs and email addresses.

CNET notes a post on the blog of an Adobe employee who found out that the @facebook.com address had made the leap to personal contact lists — bad news if you’re actually trying to contact someone who doesn’t often check the “Other” category in their Facebook inbox.

“Today, a co-worker discovered that his contact info for me had been silently updated to overwrite my work email address with my Facebook email address,” [she] wrote. “He discovered this only after sending work emails to the wrong address.”

Facebook’s spokesperson calls this “email loss” just “confusion” on the part of the Facebook users who don’t know an “Other” inbox exists.

“By default, messages from friends or friends of friends go into your Inbox. Everything else goes to your Other folder. (If you click on Messages in your left hand navigation menu, you’ll see below it an Other folder that drops down),” he wrote. “That is likely where the messages are being sent from other people’s emails. Even if that person is friends with them on Facebook, if the friend doesn’t have that email on their Facebook account, the message could end up in the Other folder.”

Because really, that’s what the issue is — not the fact that Facebook pushed the change to all users without so much as a heads up.

If you haven’t already change or update your email address in Facebook settings, here’s how: Go to your Timeline and click on “About.” Scroll down in “Contact Information” and hit “Edit.” Use the “X” out button to hide the @facebook.com email and show your preferred email address. Or if you don’t have Timeline yet (bless your heart, I’m jealous): Go to your profile, click “Update info,” scroll down to “Contact Info” and click “Edit.” Customize your setting depending on each individual email address.

Facebook Investigating Email Synching Problem [PCMag.com]
Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered; e-mail lost [CNET]

 

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