Facebook has an annoying habit of changing the settings of its users’ accounts without first asking for their permission, and now it’s just done it again.

Everyone who signs up to Facebook needs to provide an email address and some people choose to make that address visible on their profile to make it easier for other people to get in touch.

For reasons unknown (or at least understood), Facebook has now changed that address to a @facebook.com one.

The change means that anyone who looks at someone’s Facebook profile will now only see an @facebook.com email address, rather than the one that was originally used.

Worse still, unless that @facebook.com address has been properly set up, email that gets sent to it probably won’t be seen.

So here’s how to undo this annoying change and restore the original email address to a Facebook profile page.

 

Step 1

Sign into Facebook and click your name or profile photo that appears at the top-left of the main page.

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Step 2

If you have the Facebook timeline enabled, click “About” below your details that appear at the top of the timeline page that opens — otherwise skip to Step 3.

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Step 3

If you don’t use the Facebook timeline, click “Info” in the list of options that appear down the left of the page.

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Step 4

Scroll down the page to find “Contact info” (timeline) or “Contact information” (no timeline) near the bottom and click the “Edit” button next to it.

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Step 5

A box will open with two email addresses at the top — your original email address first and the new @facebook.com one below. To restore the visibility of the original email address, click the ‘no entry’ icon that appears next to it and select the “Shown on timeline” option.

Now do the same for the @facebook.com email address, but instead chose the “Hidden from timeline” option.

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Step 6

Now is also a good time to review the settings for who can see your email address on Facebook. Click the ‘people’ icon next to the original email address and select the best option — we recommend “Friends” to prevent just anyone from seeing your email address, but which you chose is up to you.

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Step 7

Click the “Save” (timeline) or “Save changes” (no timeline) button at the bottom of the page to finish.