A bug, Facebook has clarified, caused the email mix-up that misdirected emails across the Web causing an uproar among millions of the networking site’s users.
According to Facebook, it had no intention of giving its new @facebook.com email addresses special visibility on user profiles, and that a software bug is responsible for resetting users’ contact addresses.
Facebook says a bug can reset a user’s email addresses to its new @facebook.com mailbox and in the process, overwriting the original address information.
Facebook engineering director Andrew Bosworth explained to the Verge that on some devices, the bug synces the last email linked to the account rather than the primary address the user set.
This means that phones pulled down @facebook.com addresses unfamiliar to their users and directed the email messages sent, to the wrong recipients.
Facebook is in the process of fixing the issue for some devices. The devices should pull the correct addressed afterwards, it said.
The users can however still change their privacy settings to show their primary email addresses instead of the Facebook one.
Users can specify whether they want to receive messages from Friends, Friend of Friends, or Everyone.
If an email to a user’s @facebook.com address – while the message originates from an address associated with Facebook friend or friend of friend’s accounts — is sent, it will be directed into the inbox.
If the message is from an address that is not associated with a friend or friend of friend’s Facebook account, it will be directed into the user’s other folder.
The message will however bounce if the user has specified in his privacy settings that he only wants to receive messages from from friends or friend of friends.
The CNET News quoted Facebook spokeperson as saying: “We’ve noticed that in a very limited number of cases, the bounce e-mail back to the original sender may not be delivered because it may get intercepted by spam filters.
“We are working to make sure that e-mail senders consistently receive bounce messages.”
Facebook said it intended to give its users more control over their messages using the new email system.
