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Facebook API Bug Deletes Contact Info On Phones
An anonymous reader writes "If you thought that Facebook's recent unannounced change of its users' email address tied with their account to Facebook ones was bad, you'll be livid if you check your mobile phone contacts and discover that the change has deleted the email addresses of many of your friends. According to Facebook, the glitch was due to a bug in its application-programming interface, and causes the last added email address to be pulled and added to the user's phone Contacts. The company says they are working hard at fixing the problem, but in the meantime, a lot of users have effectively lost some of the information stored on their devices."
On Android, I would recommend LBE Privacy Guard (requires root) to ensure FB keeps its sticky fingers out of the contacts.
On iOS, it requires jailbreaking, but there is a Cydia app called PMP or Protect My Privacy which will allow FB to have what it thinks is a contact list... when in reality, it is getting randomly generated garbage.
Either way, FB gets nothing that it shouldn't have if you know what you are doing.
On iOS, rather than jailbreaking, you can just wait until later this month when iOS 6 comes out, since it has built-in controls for granting/restricting each application's access to your contacts.
I can understand they might provide some new @facebook address for you, but can't you just ignore it entirely? Presumably your friends would email you at the address they always used to, unless you told them otherwise.
Did you even RTF Headline? His friends won't email him at the address they always used to, they'll email the @facebook address because Facebook has thoughtfully updated all their address books for them.
That's exactly what it's for. I run a small print shop, and fully half my business comes through word of mouth on the site's FB account.