Facebook email has been around for a while, but not many people were using it as their primary email. Recently, Facebook decided for you that you would love to have your Facebook email as your primary email on Facebook. Or, as Kashmir Hill, writing at Forbes, put it: Facebook’s Lame Attempt To Force Its Email Service On You. Kashmir explains,
On your profile page, Facebook has taken the liberty of making your Facebook email your default contact address.
Here’s how to change that to the address you want. Start with your own profile page.
On your profile page, find the “About” link and click it. In your profile, find the Contact Info section. You will probably see your email listed as a facebook.com address.
Click the Edit button for the Contact Info. There’s a pull down menu across from any email addresses you have listed. The two options on that menu are Shown on Timeline and Hidden from Timeline.
Choose Hidden from Timeline so that your email of choice is not the Facebook address.
Don’t forget to Save your changes. That’s all there is to it. Facebook’s control over your inbox is vanquished.
At Producer Matthew, who works for Reuters, we can see a letter from Facebook in which they explain their thinking in making this change. From their point of view, it’s just another option you can control on Facebook:
Ever since the launch of timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own timelines, and today we’re extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address.
Gizmodo called this latest Facebook move “ham-handed” saying,
Facebook, it’s probably safe to say that the way we all had our things before was the “choice” we made about “which addresses…show on [our] timelines.” This wasn’t about choice—in fact, it was the opposite. You chose for us.
Is there anyone who was actually using their @facebook.com address as their primary email and liked it that way? I email a lot of people and have never used a facebook.com address for anyone.
That’s a rather minor point, however. The real point is that Facebook not only expects you to be ever vigilant with your privacy settings (because they won’t) but also to edit your profile with good cheer when they decide to change your primary email choice for you. Without even asking.
[Note: Cross posted at BlogHer.]
Oh, I had not taken notice of this stealthy change that Facebook had made to my email address information, until I hit this blog post today. I’m quite surprised, well actually pretty disgusted at how they publicly listed the facebook address as the primary & preferred contact.
Thanks for your tips, I have now quickly changed my contact info and hid the facebook email from my timeline.
Glad it helped.