Many people will use the new Facebook contact sync feature that has been integrated into iOS 6 to pull in the photos and phone numbers of your friends. It was my understanding that the sync will swap out any exisiting contact info you have for your friends with the information that is stored on Facebook. But that does not appear to be the case. A Facebook spokeswoman explained it as follows: This summer Facebook made a change to everyone’s profiles and automatically hid your email address, replacing it with a shiny new @facebook.com email address that goes directly to your Facebook messaging inbox rather than to an email inbox. So, in essence, they hijacked millions of people’s emails and sent them to Facebook. In my opinion, this was a rather intrusive move by Facebook and I was upset about it back in June when I realized all the emails from fans, friends and followers were headed to Facebook. So to avoid getting your email directed to Facebook’s messaging inbox, you have to change the settings on your Facebook page to hide the @facebook.com address and show your regular email address. To undo the changes that Facebook decided everyone could not live without, follow these steps: I hope this post saves you from a lot of headaches that could occur if people start sending messages to your Facebook message inbox. Hat tip to TechCrunch for bringing this to our attention today. Personally, I am going to pass on Facebook contact sync for the time being. I also hope that companies like Facebook and others put a little more thought and care into making changes that affect millions of users, thus forcing everyone to eat their dog food. I’d suggest following the old saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But I also understand that with an underwhelming IPO, there is pressure to drive additional engagement. Directing all emails to Facebook is definitely one way to do it.
