Facebook Wipes Out User Messages, Contact Lists

After quietly changing the default email addresses of all its users to @facebook.com, on their profile pages, Facebook is now being blamed for causing multiple unwanted (and unwarranted) address book changes.

The end result: an even fiercer backlash from Facebook's member base than we saw just a few days ago.

It was bad enough when Facebook decided to overstep its boundaries and force an email change on all its users, whether or not they had agreed to sign on for the new email service.

But further tensions arose when the company also decided to splash those new email addresses across each user's main Facebook page, for all the world to see.

Then, just as some Facebook members were coming to terms with the changes, and went looking for their first batch of emails arriving in their new email addresses, lo and behold, a large number of vital messages, emails, and other information turned up missing.

Lost Messages; Bogus Addresses Appear

Rachel Luxemburg, an Adobe employee, first discovered something amiss with her email after a co-worker noticed that his contact info for her had been "silently updated to overwrite (my) work email address with (my) Facebook email address." (Source: gmanetwork.com)

The result of that surreptitious update was that she never received the email messages intended for her. They were not in her inbox, nor did they appear on her profile page, as one might expect.

Another Facebook user revealed that her mother found many of the email addresses in her Droid Razr smartphone contact list replaced with new, Facebook ones.

A third user came forward to complain that, after synching their phone with their Facebook account, their address book now contained many "bogus email addresses."

The situation is so pervasive that CNET has formally warned its readers: Apple's new iOS 6 Facebook integration carries a high possibility of altering address book entries without any warning. (Source: forbes.com)

Facebook Silent on the Matter

The news is undoubtedly a black mark for Facebook. So far, the company has declined to comment on the matter.

In the meantime, a warning is being issued to all individuals with software or apps that sync contacts or address books with Facebook: they should check their settings immediately and look for any unwanted changes.