Facebook Changed Your Default Email Address Here's How To Change It Back

Facebook seems to be taking more and more liberties with user's profiles these days. First we had a forced switch to the new timeline feature. Then we started seeing more and more ads. Now the social media giant wants to take over your email accounts, or at least those displayed on your "about me" page.

Unless you frequent your own "about me" page you likely don't even realize it, but your default contact email address has just been changed. Earlier today Facebook changed every users email address to their default @facebook.com address that the sites automatically associates with your username. Most if us don't even know that we have a default Facebook email address linked with our accounts, but we do. And now Facebook wants that to be the dominate form of contact on your about me page.

“As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site,” a Facebook spokesman said. “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,” he said.

Well they didn't give us much choice now did they!!

If you don't want users to use your @fecebook.com email address and want to switch back to whatever your original default was its a pretty easy switch. Simply click your name (go to your own profile), then select "Update Info" or “About” to see the page with all the various profile information about you. Under the “Contact Info” section, select edit to see the various email addresses already associated with your Facebook account, adjust priority, and set the visibility of whichever accounts you want to use.

Facebook has said that the change is intended as a security and privacy measure. The argument was that by offering everyone the same generic @facebook addresses, the company might be able to protect your preferred email and limit its visibility.

My thoughts
I call shenanigans! This doesn't play a a security measure. It plays more like Facebook wanting more advertising options by sending more messages through their servers.

Personally I'm becoming more and more disenfranchised with the site. I've had my two primary email addresses on there since I've signed-up and really don't mind them being there. Only my friends can see my private personal account and if they are on Facebook they aren't going to email me anyways. So for it really doesn't matter which email address is shown. What I don't want though is the site to take their own liberties with my account and change the information without even telling me!