We’ve come to expect Facebook storing and manipulating our personal data, but is changing our contacts’ email addresses the final straw for the social media service?
Last week Facebook started changing users’ default email addresses to their inbuilt @facebook accounts.
This was irritating for many users, but now it appears the social media service has gone too far with changing the address books of their users.
If you have connected your iPhone, Android or Windows smartphone address books to the Facebook App, there is a chance that your contacts’ email addresses are now set to send to the user’s Facebook address rather than their “normal” email account.
When you synch your phone with your PC or laptop these changes will also be made in your main address book.
Given most people don’t use their Facebook supplied email this means many people won’t see messages sent to that address. This is a serious problem
You can check if your address book has been changed by simply looking at your contacts’ email addresses.
If it has, let your contacts know their addresses may have been changed as they can change the settings on their accounts. Read Write Web has instructions on fixing the address book problem.
Facebook’s behaviour on this is seriously worrying, it’s bad enough they store all of our data but altering our personal information is for me a bridge too far.
Given most mobile phone users would rather have their wallet stolen than lose their handset, Facebook’s messing with phones address book is going to shake their confidence in the service far more than the myriad privacy issues.
If the IPO was Facebook’s peak, it could well be this poorly thought out tactic that marks the beginning of the company’s decline.