Facebook raising ire anew, this time among users
Most of the advisers I work with have shied away from having much of a professional presence on…
Most of the advisers I work with have shied away from having much of a professional presence on Facebook.
Some have business pages but few of them have been reporting getting much in the way of prospects through the network.
Certainly none have been reporting that they are relying on e-mails coming to their firms originating on the social media site.
Well that lack of reliance could be an even better thing based on reports coming out last week and over the weekend.
I had paid no attention but thanks to an e-mail from Pat Allen, founder and owner of Rock The Boat Marketing I perked up (thanks Pat!).
She sent me a couple links including these from CNET and Gizmodo.
In a nutshell it would appear that Facebook somehow, either intentionally or unintentionally had changed some people’s default e-mail address on their personal profiles to that of an “@facebook.com” e-mail address without telling them.
What is far worse though is an issue some users are reporting, chiefly that previous e-mails to those original default addresses are disappearing. There also appears to be some interaction between Facebook’s iPhone application and that of a user’s iPhone contacts repository whereby old e-mail addresses are being replaced with @facebook.com addresses.
Uggghhhh.
Now, the ability to have an “@facebook.com” e-mail address is not brand new, Facebook for example let me know of this offering several weeks ago but at that time it was an option that users could adopt if they wanted to.
In fact I just checked my own profile and my original two default profile e-mail addresses currently remain untouched.
Regardless of my lack of excitement you should at least give your profile on Facebook a look and likewise, if you have an iPhone and are running the Facebook app take a look there as well.
Here is a story from my former colleague Chloe Albanius over at my alma mater PCMag.com which has a theoretical explanation for what has happened and assurances that Facebook is looking into the matter.
Oh and here is another CNET piece that gives you a possible fix if you note that your address has indeed been tampered with (Again, mine was fine so I did not have to try this).
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