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Facebook Changed Your Primary Email Address, But Says It Warned You

Facebook recently changed all its users' primary email addresses.
Leon Neal
/
AFP/Getty Images
Facebook recently changed all its users' primary email addresses.

A key change was made to your Facebook profile recently that you may not have noticed yet. Facebook has replaced the primary email address users entered in their profile contact information with brand-new @facebook.com addresses. These addresses allow you to email external accounts from your Facebook inbox. Forbes first noticed the change:

"No one seems to want the Facebook inbox to be their main email account (with good reason). Facebook is trying to change that with a new little nudge. On your profile page, Facebook has taken the liberty of making your Facebook email your default contact address."

LifeHacker has instructions on how to quickly change your primary email information back.

We asked Facebook to explain, and got a statement reminding us that the company announced back in April that it would update addresses "to make them consistent across our site." Facebook says you can still choose which email contact information you want to show on your profile.

The Facebook statement continues:

"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."

There certainly was an April announcement, but it did not warn users that their default profile email address would be switched without their knowledge. When asked why there wasn't an additional notification to users, or a repeat of the announcement as the changes were taking place, the spokesman did not respond.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Elise Hu is a host-at-large based at NPR West in Culver City, Calif. Previously, she explored the future with her video series, Future You with Elise Hu, and served as the founding bureau chief and International Correspondent for NPR's Seoul office. She was based in Seoul for nearly four years, responsible for the network's coverage of both Koreas and Japan, and filed from a dozen countries across Asia.