You’ve probably heard about the widespread Facebook glitch that caused most email addresses to display on profiles as @Facebook.com emails, regardless of whether or not an individual user wanted to use it. And sure, it was annoying, but the fallout from this mix-up could be decidedly more inconvenient.
Some Facebook users who have synced their Facebook accounts with their smartphone address books have recently discovered that their contacts’ email addresses were removed and replaced with their @facebook.com counterparts. You can imagine, then, that people who are emailing friends, family and colleagues from their phones may not realize that their messages aren’t going to the correct address—cue digital chaos.
None of us at V3 have yet noticed the problem, but it seems to particularly affect iPhone users who have updated to the iOS 6 beta. Regardless of what phone you use, it’s a good idea to double-check your contacts to see if they’ve been switched to @facebook.com email addresses. If so, try these tips from Lifehacker to fix your contacts.
- On your phone, turn off Facebook syncing for your contact list. If you use an Android device, go to the Facebook app > Settings > Sync Contacts and select Don’t Sync. On an iPhone, go to the Facebook app, click Menu, scroll to Friends, tap the Share button, tap Sync Contacts and turn syncing off.
- Next, go to your Gmail inbox and click the Gmail label under the Google logo. Go to Contacts > More > Restore Contacts. The exact date of the switch isn’t known, but it’s best to go earlier than June 21, 2012. Click “Restore.”
If this option doesn’t fix the problem, your only solution is to encourage your friends and family to change their Facebook profiles back to their originally specified email addresses. Once that happens, Facebook will sync the correct email address back to your phone.
Facebook engineers have investigated the problem and determined that it’s a bug that should be fixed within the next few hours, if the repairs haven’t already gone through. Still, it doesn’t hurt to take a quick scan through your phone’s list of contacts to make sure the email addresses are as they should be.
Has your phone’s contact data been affected by this issue? Let us know if you’re able to fix the problem using the restoration tips.
Image via The Telegraph
