Facebook recently began changing the default email address users associated with their account to a facebook.com address without so much as a warning. Changing your contact address back to what you want takes a few steps, but unfortunately doesn’t include a way to block Facebook from pulling the same move again.
To change the email address your Facebook friends see back to what you prefer instead of the @facebook.com address the online social network slipped into your profile, do this:
- Login to your Facebook account and click
About
. You can find that below your profile picture on your timeline page.
Click About to see the email address Facebook is showing your friends
- Look for the Contact Info block and click
Edit
.
Click Edit to manage the email addresses your friends see
- You can’t remove your @facebook.com email address, so instead click the privacy pop-up (look for the nondescript circle icon to the right of your Facebook email address) that currently is set to
Show on Timeline
and selectHidden from Timeline
.
The tiny circle icon reveals the setting for showing or hiding email addresses
- Assuming you don’t want anyone to ever see your facebook.com email address, you can hide it by clicking the padlock icon and choosing
Only Me
. - Click the circle icon next to the email addresses you want visible and choose
Show on Timeline
— and you aren’t forced to make any of your email addresses visible. - Once you’re happy with your email settings, click
Save
.
Users that have a Facebook URL, like http://www.facebook.com/jeffgamet as an example, have a Facebook email address that’s at least recognizable. In my case, that’s [email protected] — an address that I never check, so don’t feel singled out if you try to contact me there and I never reply.
If you never set up a vanity URL for your account, however, the auto-assigned email address you get is just a string of unfriendly looking numbers.
It’s no secret that Facebook wants to be as deeply entrenched in its user’s lives as possible, but pushing subscribers into using a facebook.com email address without even an alert that the change was being made on their behalf is, well… just so Facebook.