
Facebook Changed Everyone's Email to Facebook.com; Here's How to Fix It - jhack
http://lifehacker.com/5921095/facebook-just-changed-your-email-without-permission-heres-how-to-get-it-back?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_facebook&utm_source=lifehacker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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swang
People saying it's no big deal either never used Facebook to grab e-mails for
parties/weddings/celebrations.

All my friends have emails, and most of them have Facebook, but not all of
them check Facebook that often or only have Facebook to not become a social
outcast. You either need to contact them by phone or by email if you need
something from them in some immediate time frame. Add to that the fact that
there are more emails listed on the site than phone numbers so your primary
option is email them.

So now those people who haven't bothered checking Facebook cannot be contacted
because that email address just routes back to Facebook. It negates the whole
point of having your email listed, which is for your friends to contact you in
some non-Facebook way.

And Facebook just has a fetish with mucking with your personal settings. It's
the only company that routinely does this kind of thing without bothering to
say anything about it.

~~~
loceng
They're trying to control the ecosystem and tighten the reigns. However you
can't successfully control any ecosystem, you can only manage them. Continuing
to abuse users is the absolute opposite thing to do. Users will start flooding
away from Facebook once other competitive systems develop in its place.

~~~
taligent
What competitive systems ?

People keep talking like some magical Facebook competitor is just around the
corner, ready to take on 400+ million fleeing users and assume its position at
the top.

It simply isn't going to happen. The ghost town that is Google Plus is showing
exactly what most competitors end up looking like.

~~~
wyclif
Using "Google Plus" and "ghost town" in the same sentence is a red flag for
not knowing what you're talking about. I get way more engagement on Google+
than I do on Facebook, and I've had a Facebook account for a long time.

~~~
bschlinker
Perhaps his Google+ experience is different then yours? I'm inclined to agree
-- most people who I know have Google+ accounts, have added me to their
circles (and vice-versa) but chose to keep all of their interaction on
Facebook.

The groups of people you communicate with are different. Just like during the
90s, some groups used AIM, some MSN, some ICQ...

~~~
stretchwithme
maybe its more like suburbia than a ghost town.

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zerohp
This is a really stupid move. If someone is viewing my profile and looking for
an email address, they're not looking for this one. If that was the case they
could just message me through the website.

This even affected profiles that listed 2 or more email addresses.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>This is a really stupid move. If someone is viewing my profile and looking
for an email address, they're not looking for this one. If that was the case
they could just message me through the website.

This seems painfully obvious to me. I am willing to assume that this change in
visibility of email addresses was inadvertent or just a simple misthought
choice, but it seems far more arrogant of Facebook to think that I'm going to
use them as an email client. Ever. Besides the privacy implications, Facebooks
messages feature and email, basically be definition and by 5+ years of usage,
indicates that they're not the same thing.

This is the worst possible way I've seen someone use email, and I'm someone
who will often use Facebook messages as it's a more reliable way of getting in
touch with someone than email.

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seanmcq
I can confirm that my profile was modified to hide my real email address
without permission. This appears to be more than a hype piece.

~~~
jedc
They did this a couple of days ago; I think I noticed it on Saturday...

~~~
nollidge
I'm willing to bet most news agencies/blogs sat on it until today to reach a
more people.

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jaredsohn
I just checked my profile and I saw that my facebook e-mail address was shared
with 'only me', likely due to other privacy choices I made and that it stopped
sharing my real e-mail address. I think this might have had the effect where
people wouldn't see any e-mail address shared. (Although one can easily derive
the @facebook.com e-mail address anyway.)

Also, this change just generally makes it harder to make use of other social
sites. Need the person's e-mail address to add them on LinkedIn? Need to
scrape e-mail addresses of your friends to invite them to another service (as
was talked about a lot a few years ago)? Can't do either in many cases if your
friends just show their @facebook addresses.

Edit: Well, for LinkedIn that would only work if the person associated their
facebook.com address with LinkedIn, which I don't think people do. For the
latter, it could still work but the person would strangely hear about the
other service via Facebook (which I suppose Facebook could 'lose' those
messages if it became a problem) and it could be hard to look people up by
their more common e-mail addresses.

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ColinWright
Some context, from two days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433>

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mtgentry
It's strange how much FB worships at the alter of engagement. Time and time
again they intentionally poke their own users in the eye like this.

~~~
loceng
It's called abuse..

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smutticus
Here is how to resolve the issue: <http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-
a-Facebook-Account>

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denzil_correa
Another one of Facebook's privacy "escapades". Sigh! I thought by now they
would have got these things right but it looks like "privacy" is always going
to be "bête noire" of Facebook.

~~~
shellox
Facebook and privacy in one sentence. Seriously ;)?

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peterkelly
I sent a test email to my new @facebook.com email address from both my regular
email account and another test email account I own. Neither ended up in either
my Facebook messages list or being redirected to my real email. I have no idea
where the messages went. Nice one!

At least I've found out about it now and have been able to remove the address
from my profile.

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rdl
This is even lamer than general because FB Messages is an awesome product on
its own (a reliable way to message or IM people with little risk of
spamfiltering), and absolutely didn't need a heavy-handed push like this to be
successful. Now, FB Messages is tainted with "product people didn't like, so
we'll force them to use it".

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wrekkuh
I've been trying to find out how much of this change has to do with iOS 6's
Facebook integration. I remember having to re-do my contacts two weeks ago and
this was a HUGE issue because, as Swang 5 said, i had to basically call or SMS
everyone to get their e-mails into my contact lists.

Really big inconvenience.

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invisible
It sounds more like they're providing an email to every user with the options
set to public by default. While that could be construed as bad, it shouldn't
override another email if that other email is marked as public.

~~~
omarchowdhury
It is over-riding and replacing the normal email addresses.

~~~
rhizome
It didn't replace, in my experience. I didn't know this was to be A Thing, and
last week I was going through my settings and noticed the facebook.com
address. "Huh, I guess they're adding email addresses to the existing URLs
everybody has (or was able to sign up for those years ago)." My other (login)
email address was still there, but as an alternate or whatever.

~~~
zerohp
It replaced both of my public email addresses.

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invisible
I bet it did if you click "Edit." I bet that your other email addresses are
there and are marked as "Hide on Timeline."

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wahsd
Is it time yet for a campaign of intentional misinformation across Facebook?

Is there anything that is more a threat to Facebook than misinformation? I am
sure they track IP and where you are hitting the local switches and routers,
on top of the location you provide, but is it time to provide false location
and demographic info to spread a marketing virus. What would make advertisers
shy off more than discovering that the demographic info is trash and even more
useless than the trash Facebook now hocks.

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bschlinker
I can't imagine why they decided email addresses now needed two layers of
privacy controls. First layer = who can see this, second layer = is it visible
on timeline. If I didn't want it visible on the timeline, why wouldn't I just
select "Only me" on the first option...? Am I trying to keep my email private
from myself?

They also only made the change for email addresses -- not IM usernames, etc.
If the two layers were to help with privacy somehow, why not apply it to
everything?

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AznHisoka
Wait a minute.. did they do this to just hide emails from spammers?? or did
they actually replace your email address with your official facebook email
address?

~~~
sp332
It's a real, working email address that sends emails to your facebook
"messages".

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DanBC
Do Facebook EU have to conform to EU email handling law now they're an email
service provider? Are they conforming to those laws?

~~~
tikhonj
I imagine they have to conform to those laws _for their email service_. And,
given that they're a big company with plenty of lawyers, I have no doubt they
are. However, this probably changes nothing about the core product.

~~~
DanBC
> _And, given that they're a big company with plenty of lawyers, I have no
> doubt they are_

Recent events in the UK make me have less confidence in the law abiding nature
of large lawyered corporations. This is especially true with respect to
privacy which is complex, often not in the corporation's interest, and poorly
regulated.

I'll agree I sound a bit like a paranoid privacy nut here, and that there's
nothing to suggest Facebook are doing anything illegal.

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bradfa
Either they put everything back, or some accounts haven't gotten hit yet. My
"primary" email is still listed as my personal email address. I can change it
to be the @facebook.com one, but that's just listed as my "Facebook email".

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javajosh
This is a big problem. But the only way it will be known as a big problem is
if G+ puts some money behind a PR effort. I think this is a great opportunity
for G+ to increase it's user base.

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shellox
How about not using facebook? I just don't see the value in it. The most
people post any bullshit on facebook like "I'm in the train now. It's warm
here." I think it's a waste of lifetime to read such things. There are a lot
of other things to do and new things to explore, which are more fun and don't
monitor your activities all the day.

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tubbo
Am I the only one who's actually happy about not having my actual personal
email exposed (even accidentally) on Facebook?

~~~
entropy_
You always had that option by setting it to hidden. The issue is that if you
wanted to expose your email to, say, your friends so that they could contact
you in some non-Facebook way if they needed to, now you have to revert the
changes that Facebook did.

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invdevm
It's time to dump Facebook and use Zurker (still in beta, you'd need an
invite). Here's the invitation link:

<http://www.zurker.in/i-29371-ohhlpiiglq>

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akproxy
Seems Zuck has lost it, after all.

