Facebook just changed your default email without your consent: here’s how to opt out

Facebook just changed your default email without your consent: here’s how to opt out - You'd be forgiven for not knowing that Facebook has an external email system built in to the site's familiar messaging system. After all, few of us have need for yet another email address. And given the way Facebook algorithms decide to hide messages that the site doesn't believe is important, we're absolutely terrified of losing important messages.

The fact that you're not using that Facebook email address appears to have led to Facebook trying to figure out new ways to push you to the system. So, they've taken action by forcibly changing your contact email address listed on your Facebook page from your actual address that you regularly check to [your.name.here]@facebook.com — or worse, [random number]@facebook.com.

People looking at your Facebook profile will no longer see your real off-site email unless you act

What does this mean? Well, if your high school sweetheart finds you on Facebook and wants to contact you, they'll have to do it on Facebook — there's no external option. There's nothing opt-in about this change, and there was no notification about it either: Facebook just decided to swap out emails to try to get people to use their cobwebbed email system.

Thankfully, you take a few simple steps to restore your old, non-Facebook email address. Start by visiting your profile page and clicking on "About" to bring up, amongst other things, your contact info. Click the edit button on the "Contact Info" section, which should bring up a list of all the email addresses Facebook has on file for you, including your new facebook-domained email address. Left click on the open circle to the right of your.name.here@facebook.com and choose the "Hidden from Timeline" closed circle. Then pick which email address you'd prefer folks to contact you at, and change that closed "Hidden from Timeline" circle to an open "Shown on Timeline" circle. Simple as that! ( Gizmodo )

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Baltic Sea letter in a bottle found 24 years later

Baltic Sea letter in a bottle found 24 years later – Nearly a quarter-century after a German boy tossed a message in a bottle off a ship in the Baltic Sea, he's received an answer.

A 13-year-old Russian, Daniil Korotkikh, was walking with his parents on a beach when he saw something glittering lying in the sand.

80 km northwest of Kaliningrad, Russia - In this Friday, March 11, 2011 photo Daniil Korotkikh shows a letter he found in a bottle on a beach at the village of Morskoye on the Curonian Spit, 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Kaliningrad, Russia. The 13-year-old Russian was walking with his parents on a beach when he saw something glittering lying in the sand. It was a bottle with a letter sent by German boy 24 years ago in the Baltic Sea. The letter said: 'My name is Frank, and I'm five years old. My dad and I are traveling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you.'

80 km northwest of Kaliningrad, Russia - In this Friday, March 11, 2011 photo Daniil Korotkikh holds a bottle with a letter he found on a beach at the village of Morskoye on the Curonian Spit, 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Kaliningrad, Russia. The 13-year-old Russian, was walking with his parents on a beach when he saw something glittering lying in the sand. It was a bottle with a letter sent by German boy 24 years ago in the Baltic Sea

"I saw that bottle and it looked interesting," Korotkikh told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "It looked like a German beer bottle with a ceramic plug, and there was a message inside."

His father, who knows schoolboy German, translated the letter, carefully wrapped in cellophane and sealed by a medical bandage.

It said: "My name is Frank, and I'm five years old. My dad and I are traveling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you."

The letter, dated 1987, included an address in the town of Coesfeld.

The boy in the letter, Frank Uesbeck, is now 29. His parents still live at the letter's address.

"At first I didn't believe it," Uesbeck told the AP about getting the response from Korotkikh. In fact, he barely remembered the trip at all; his father actually wrote the letter.

The Russian boy and the German man met each other earlier this month via an Internet video link.

Korotkikh showed Uesbeck the bottle where he found the message and the letter that he put in a frame.

The Russian boy said he does not believe that the bottle actually spent 24 years in the sea: "It would not have survived in the water all that time," he said.

He believes it had been hidden under the sand where he found it — on the Curonian Spit, a 100-kilometer (60-mile) stretch of sand in Lithuania and Russia.

In the web chat earlier this month, Uesbek gave Korotkikh his new address to write to and promised to write back when he receives his letter.

"He'll definitely get another letter from me," the 29-year-old said.

Uesbeck was especially thrilled that he was able to have a positive impact on a life of a young person far away from Germany.

"It's really a wonderful story," he said. "And who knows? Perhaps one day we will actually be able to arrange a meeting in person." ( Associated Press )

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What happens to your email when you die?

What happens to your email when you die?. IN a digital world your deepest secrets no longer die with you. Andrew Ramadge reports on what happens to your private emails when you pass away.

Remember that time you poured your heart out in an email to your best friend after one too many glasses of wine?

Or that sexy message from an old lover that made you blush at work?

Well, if you die, your family and others could end up reading them.

Web email services owned by internet giants Google and Microsoft have a policy of keeping your data after you die and letting your next of kin or the executor of your estate access it.

There is no way for users to flag that they don't want this to happen and no recourse under Australia's existing privacy laws.

Web email services like Hotmail and Gmail won't let users specify what should happen to their messages when they die.

More than one in four Australians uses webmail, with around six and a half million people logging on to one or more of the top three providers Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! in September, according to Nielsen Online NetView.

So, if Hotmail will keep your emails and allow access to others when you die, why can't they retrieve emails that have been lost while I am stillalive?????

Unlike a shoebox in the attic, these services can hold tens of thousands of messages. Accounts with Google's Gmail can hold up to 7GB – or roughly 70,000 emails with a small to medium picture attached to each.

And they archive the messages you've written as well as received.

When it comes to deleting the data, Microsoft's Hotmail will remove an account if it is inactive for 270 days, while Gmail leaves the responsibility to the next of kin.

Of the top three providers, only Yahoo! refuses to supply emails to anyone after a user has died. The user's next of kin can ask for the account to be closed, but cannot gain access to it.

A Yahoo! spokesperson said the only exception to this rule would be if the user specified otherwise in their will.

Australian privacy laws do not cover the emerging problem of what happens to your web-based data when you die. The Privacy Act only refers to people who are alive.

On top of that, many of the most popular web services are not covered by local privacy laws because they are based in the US.

The subject has also proved problematic for social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. More than eight million Australians visited one or both of those sites in September, according to Nielsen's figures.

Facebook has recently publicised a feature called memorialisation that lets the family of deceased users keep their profile page online as a virtual tribute.

Turning a profile into a memorial will remove sensitive information from the page and restrict access to the deceased's friends. The family will not be allowed to log in to the account or access private messages, but can request that it be taken down.

MySpace on the other hand says it addresses the issue of family access to sensitive data on a "case by case basis".

A spokesperson for MySpace could not rule out letting a user's next of kin log into their profile – potentially giving them access to private messages.

There is no way for users to tell MySpace that they don't want this to happen, however the site said it was "a good idea that we are exploring".

Read on for a summary of the policies of popular email and social networking sites:

Hotmail

Hotmail has a policy of deleting email accounts if they are not touched for 270 days. If you die, your next of kin would be able to access your account within that period by proving their identity and supplying a death certificate.

A spokesperson said: "Microsoft's policy allows next of kin to gain access to the content of the account of the deceased upon proving their own identity and relationship. Hotmail does not have an option to specify in advance that they do not want the contents of their email accessed by a next of kin."

Gmail

Gmail will also allow the next of kin or executor of estate to apply for access to a deceased user's email account. However, they need more identification than Hotmail. The person would have to prove their own identity and supply a death certificate as well as proof of an email conversation between them and the deceased.

If the deceased user was underage, the next of kin would also have to provide a copy of their birth certificate.

Gmail does not delete the deceased user's account, but says the next of kin could choose to do so after gaining access to it.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has the strictest policy when it comes to the data of deceased users. The company will let the user's next of kin ask for the account to be closed, but will not give them access to it. It says users who want their emails to be inherited should make arrangements in their will.

A spokesperson said: "The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for a Yahoo! Mail account is to treat their email as a private communication and to treat the content of their messages as confidential.

"Internet users who want to be sure their email and other online accounts are accessible to their legal heirs may want to work with their attorneys to plan an offline process for such access as part of their estate planning process."

Facebook

Facebook has a policy called memorialisation that applies to the profiles of deceased users. Once the user's death is confirmed, their profile can be turned into a sort of virtual shrine. When that happens, the profile is locked so no one can log into it and sensitive information (including status updates) is removed.

Family members can determine how the memorial looks and behaves – for example if other people can continue to write on the user's page – but can't log into the profile themselves.

From Facebook's Help page: "Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honour requests from close family members to close the account completely."

MySpace

MySpace has no set policy when it comes to the profiles of deceased users. A spokesperson said: "Given the sensitive nature of deceased member profiles, MySpace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified and will work with families to respect their wishes."

The site says it will not allow anyone to "assume control" of the user's profile, however it won't rule out giving families access to the user's private data. MySpace does not delete profiles after periods of inactivity, but will remove a deceased user's profile at the family's request. A spokesperson said giving users a choice about who can access their data "sounds like a good idea". / news.com.au

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