Facebook has received a number of complaints from users that it is responsible for wiping email contacts from mobile devices, BBC News reports.
The glitch occurred after Facebook made the move last week to set the @facebook.com email as the default email and hide all other emails on profiles. Additionally, the change in email settings caused many users to have emails sent to what wired.com refers to as “the ‘Other’ folder that no one pays attention to.” Facebook places the blame for the email glitch on a software bug.
Facebook blamed the problem on the application programming interface (API) — the program that sends updates to the smart phones of users every time their friends update their contact information. The API was designed to copy a user’s primary email address to their friend’s smart phones. Instead, many people’s contacts were wiped. (RELATED: Facebook email change ignites new user uproar)
Quoted by CNN Money, a Facebook representative said that, “For people on certain devices, a bug meant that the device was pulling the last email address added to the account rather than the primary email address, resulting in @facebook.com addresses being pulled.”
According to The Verge, devices with Facebook contact-sync enabled — such as Android, Blackberry and iPhones with iOS 6 beta — have been affected by this bug. (RELATED: Facebook says bug changed some users’ default political affiliations)
Facebook has yet to confirm the scale of the bug, but is quoted by the BBC as stating that the problem “will be resolved soon.”