
Facebook forces all users over to Facebook.com e-mail addresses - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/facebook-forces-all-users-over-to-facebook-com-e-mail-addresses/
======
cfqycwz
This morning my mother was complaining that many of the email addresses in her
Droid Razr contacts had been replaced with Facebook ones. It would seem the
Facebook app had been populating her address book with emails and contact
photos, and decided to migrate all her Facebook-using contacts over to this
convenient new system. That seems like a much greater controversy to me than
Facebook hiding people's email addresses.

~~~
zhoutong
Yes, and how about iMessage and FaceTime that require email addresses in
contacts to work? And also the 3rd party sites that rely on Facebook OAuth API
to identify users based on emails (they could use uids, but I'm sure some are
still using email).

~~~
slig
This completely blows away the "let's the users sign up using facebook, we
store their email and if we ever decide to ditch the FB login, we can always
email them a password reset"

~~~
spydertennis
I think for now the api is still returning their correct email address.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Have you tested it? Is this going to stay that way or will API usage move to
returning only @facebook.com as well?

~~~
spydertennis
Yes I just tested it.

~~~
omarchowdhury
And they are still returning non-Facebook addresses through the API?

That's surprising.

------
dexen
Obligatory jwz quote: ``Zawinski's law of software envelopment''

 _Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs
which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can._

(obviously Myspace did not read mail ;-))

[EDIT]

In response to <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patrickaljord> below,
Myspace introduced email service in mid-2009. Perhaps the above should read,
``(obviously Myspace did not read mail back then when it mattered ;-))''

~~~
patrickaljord
> (obviously Myspace did not read mail ;-))

Except that it can <http://www.myspace.com/guide/mail>

~~~
chrisdroukas
There has to be a corollary floating around about sufficient user bases.

------
jfoutz
Amusingly, facebook dropped 2 out of 3 test messages from the other address
facebook knows about. Seriously, if anything should be whitelisted, it's that.

I understand that they want to read my mail. They want to know who i interact
with.

Why make such a shitty mail client? No POP. no IMAP. Can't view headers. It's
not clear how much html is allowed, because they're dropping to many messages.

They're not even pretending it's a serious offering. They're just screwing
around with settings.

 _edit_

\-- mail lag is 30 minutes now --

<b> <u> and <i> work, <font> and <span> failed.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
In my experience, test messages never work, but real messages always do.
Somehow.

~~~
josteink
_In my experience, test messages never work, but real messages always do_

Obviously you can confirm that the real messages that you do receive gets
through. What about those that didn't? How do you know that they didn't? How
do you know no such messages exist?

Are you being naive here or am I missing some sarcasm?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Serious, but yes, I do worry about real messages that didn't get through. Hmm.

------
zerohp
I don't think its overstating the situation to say: Facebook changes profiles
without permission or notification.

~~~
ThePherocity
True, but there is a fine line. You cannot reasonably move a product forward
if a few select people refuse to play along. Every product I release, I'm met
with disdain from users that don't want to change, and how it was perfect the
way it was. And the next release with a different change, it's the same users
complaining how the version that they're using now is perfect, why would I
change things?

People love to complain, and people don't like change.

~~~
forgotAgain
There is no fine line here. Facebook changed a personal attribute of their
users. This particular action is not justifiable under any circumstances I can
see.

~~~
notatoad
The only justification i can see is that it's facebook, and this is pretty
much the sort of behaviour i expect from facebook. i have a hard time getting
outraged over behaviour that is totally in character.

~~~
ionfish
Explanations are not justifications.

------
jaredsohn
It seems like they didn't change your previous preferences but rather added a
new one and changed how they interpret preferences as to what is displayed.

If you look at your list of e-mail addresses, it will let you choose who to
share it with if it should be shown on timeline. Previously I had a real
e-mail address that was being shared with friends and another real address
that was for 'only me'. When I looked at my preferences today, I saw that
those settings remained intact and that it added a third @facebook.com address
that was being shared with only me.

I think the second field might be brand new. It says either "Shown on
timeline" or "Hidden on timeline" and when I looked today it showed both of
the email addresses that I had previously set up as hidden and the new
facebook.com one as shown. If they would have just marked the e-mail address
that I had set up to be shared with friends as "shown" and added the
@facebook.com address as "shown", I (and suspect many others) would be happy
and it would still allow them to emphasize that people can use @facebook.com
e-mail addresses. (Some people might not like this for spam reasons, but I
think this is would be far less evil than what they did.)

Also, since they don't share e-mail addresses via the social graph or have
other ways of viewing data, what is the point of differentiating 'show on
timeline' with specifying who you share it with? None of the other fields
(phone number, IM screen name, address etc.) include this "show on timeline
field" but rather set visibility based on the sharing settings. It seems like
the "show on timeline" field is completely unnecessary and was only added to
get the effect that we're all talking about. (So this was clearly evilness
rather than incompetence; for some preference system changes one could argue
that it was necessary to 'break' old preferences since the new ones were so
different, but that isn't the case here.)

~~~
desigooner
FWIW, I had my real email addresses showing before this weekend and when I
checked this morning, the only email address that was being shown was the
@facebook.com one. My other 2 email addresses (one visible to each of my
friends and one only to a close few) were hidden from my timeline. Shady!!

~~~
Periodic
I can confirm. I had my wife check my account, and she has the most liberal
viewing privileges of my profile out of anyone I know. She now only sees a
@facebook.com email address. My primary address, @gmail.com, is no longer
visible under Contact Info on my profile.

------
Alterlife
There are three discussions about this on the front page :-/ .

I think this is just might be one of those things which would ticks us off as
techies... but techies are the minority audience for sites like facebook.

Do emails sent to the facebook id go to the standard facebook 'message
system'? If so, for a majority of people this will probably make sense... want
to message somebody on facebook? You don't have to login to facebook! Email
them at xyz@facebook.com. I didn't know you could do that, pretty sure a lot
of other people didn't either. Now a lot of folks probably are updated about
this feature.

In addition: non-techies who have accidentally exposed their private email
id's will now have their facebook id's scraped instead... and the ones who
exposed their private emails intentionally will change it back anyway.

However, all said and done... it could have been done differently.

~~~
ken
> If so, for a majority of people this will probably make sense... want to
> message somebody on facebook? You don't have to login to facebook! Email
> them at xyz@facebook.com.

There are easy ways to advertise this fact, without changing anyone's personal
info in their Facebook account. It could be as simple as adding the text "You
can also send messages to JaneDoe@facebook.com" to JaneDoe's profile page.

~~~
Alterlife
I do agree - it could have (and possibly should have) been done differently. I
was trying rationalize facebook's action. It's a hugely successful company run
by people smarter than I.

~~~
alextingle
"run by people smarter than I"

Don't bet on that!

------
mtgx
This is so much worse than anything Google has ever forced upon users with
Google+.

~~~
drivebyacct2
What has Google "forced upon users" with Google+? Especially given that you
can still remove G+ from your large Google profile (for now at least)

~~~
javajosh
One big thing that had a real impact on me was removal of the social features
in Google Reader. I'd also argue that removing the ubiquitous "subscribe to
this site via RSS" icon in the location bar was also damaging. RSS readers are
a boon to the open, eclectic web, and any action that reduces their use is
damaging, in my opinion.

~~~
drivebyacct2
They did nothing to change the RSS portion of Google Reader, the rss icon is a
Chrome issue and is easily solved with one of a dozen extensions. The feature
they removed was "sharing" and that was really ancillary to Reader/rss anyway.

~~~
javajosh
You are a troll.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Other people clearly agree with me. Is there a reason you feel this way? You
can still subscribe to and read RSS feeds. As I said, the sharing aspect you
mention, while a part of Google Reader, had nothing to do with RSS (the idea
OR protocol) and was an add-on.

Naturally as Google wanted to unite social strategies they shifted "Sharing on
Reader" to "Sharing on G+". I don't see why that's shocking or terribly hard
to cope with.

And most of all I don't know why me expressing that makes me a troll. Or are
you just angry and unable to articulate yourself outside of calling me names?

~~~
javajosh
If there was any doubt in my mind before, you've removed it.

~~~
drivebyacct2
What is your problem? Again, do you have anything to say? You realize that by
calling people names and not engaging in discussion, you're acting _precisely_
like a troll, right?

------
ColinWright
Earlier discussion, now 2 days old:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433>

Here's some discussion and a link describing how to fix it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157589>

------
tobtoh
With Facebook making this change, I guess anyone who is unaware of this and
syncs their Facebook contacts to their phone (either directly or via apps)
stands to lose the 'real' email addresses of their friends and especially once
they sync back to their desktop/cloud/gmail etc!!

~~~
bad_user
On my Android the Facebook details are in a separate bucket than my Gmail
contact details. So the Facebook sync hasn't overridden the email addresses
that were manually entered by me or have been synced by Google's Contacts.

But on the other hand I'm seeing a lot of new Facebook email addresses in my
contacts.

------
reustle
I'm actually not able to change my email settings currently. It forced my real
email to "not public" mode and my facebook email to "public" and the buttons
are unresponsive. I also can't "remove this from my timeline" either.

Update: A few hard refreshes later, the buttons started to work.

~~~
smokinn
Same happened to me. I think their email settings servers/subsystem is just
getting hammered right now as more and more news articles are being written
about this.

------
sheckel
Wow. This thread just alerted me to the existence of that 'other' mailbox. I
had no clue that existed. That could have saved me some trouble; I just found
this message from last July:

[http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1792/screenshot20120625at35...](http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/1792/screenshot20120625at359.png)

~~~
petitmiam
I just wonder how many millions of messages that have gone unnoticed. I've
seen a few articles written, alerting people to it's existence, but it's not
like people are searching for articles on things they don't know exist.

------
crusso
Yay... I'm always looking for more reasons to NOT use Facebook for any
communication whatsoever. Thank you, Facebook!

~~~
envex
Doesn't seem like you're looking too hard -- you know, still having a facebook
account and all.

If you hate it that much, delete the account :P

~~~
crusso
Well, yeah. I'm mostly just jabbing at them in frustration at how much other
people buy into centering their lives around FB... but I'm not a total
luddite. :) Every once-in-a-while, someone from high school wants to get in
touch with me and FB is a decent enough honey pot.

That said, I am enough of a luddite to not see the need to have a Twitter
account.

~~~
icebraining
Grumph. Not having a Facebook account is not being a Luddite, not any more
than not eating at MacDonalds means you hate food.

------
grecy
FWIW: I don't have timeline, and it changed mine to @facebook.com

~~~
ceejayoz
Timeline was rolled out to all accounts. Are you using a plugin to approximate
the old look or something?

~~~
__float
I've still seen some people who don't have Timeline yet. It is rare though.

~~~
idleloops
I can't stand timeline. I find it really difficult to read them for some
reason - probably something to do with having more than one column - and poor
alignment - it's cognitively difficult.

~~~
alextingle
I read an opinion piece that said is was _deliberately_ confusing... an
attempt to trick you into clicking on ads.

------
watmough
This is nothing but a fairly desperate attempt to gain email address share,
and promote Facebook lock-in.

Think about Joe Average User who spends a bunch of time on Facebook. If people
start emailing them at JoeAverageUser@Facebook.com, then they can scarcely
abandon the site...

------
bad_user
So I just disabled the Facebook contacts sync on my phone, because as of today
it is useless for me. I'm also thinking of uninstalling the Facebook app,
because the web interface is good enough for me, and I kept the Facebook app
just for the contacts sync.

~~~
dudus
Good luck with that. I can't uninstall the facebook app because my carrier
decided that this app is not optional. It just can't uninstall. Android
Samsung Galaxy S2 on Rogers

~~~
LoneWolf
Root it, install titanium backup, remove it (if its not rootable then there is
no way that im aware of). That's what I did for my HTC desire so I could
remove the crapware (fb app included) on it.

------
JSadowski
I only wish that when Facebook gave away my email when I connected with other
sites that they gave away the Facebook email address. As it is, I almost never
give permission to sites because most require an email address. I do not wish
to share my real email address just to read an article that has shown up on my
newsfeed, but would gladly share my @facebook.com email address

~~~
SquareWheel
Whenever I come across an interesting "___ read an article" post, I just
Google the title of the article.

~~~
idleloops
Try right clicking (or menu key), copy the url, open new tab (CTRL+T), go to
location bar (CTRL + L), and paste (CTRL + V). It's the Javascript I think
that hijacks the click.

~~~
yesbabyyes
Alternatively, click Cancel when it asks you to add the app, and it will
redirect to the original article. I think this is what annoys me most on
Facebook.

------
mintplant
I just checked, and this has not happened for me. My email address on Facebook
is still my personal one.

Interestingly enough, even though I have an actual username set, my
@facebook.com address is still the numbered user ID.

------
oohaba
Not sure if this has always been a "feature" of Facebook's email service, but
apparently you can login with the facebook email address. A would-be hacker
only needs to guess your password.

Case in point: a friend has already told me there have been renewed attempts
to log into her account from other locations and devices.

------
lnanek2
Reminds me of foursquare. I can't, for the life of me, get it to post pictures
to my facebook feed any longer. I've tried reinstalling, posting with a camera
picture, posting with a gallery picture, relinking facebook, tapping the icon
on and off, making sure picture is public, etc..

I'm pretty sure they disabled this functionality so they can show the map
instead which gets them more clicks into their site proper and helps their
traffic. Really pisses me off because I take a picture every check in and
think they are more interesting and don't think people should be forced into
foursquare to view them and don't want to have to post them separately - then
in their marketing material for the new face lift they even show a picture of
a facebook post with a picture. Lies.

------
brudgers
Well I was using my gmail account to collect all the worthless emails Facebook
sends me. Now I guess I will be wasting Facebook's disk space instead.

On the positive side, they'll be getting no data to mine since they already
know what I do there.

~~~
mccr8
You can easily disable those emails by changing around your Facebook settings.

------
nimblegorilla
I already use google as my preferred giant corporation with access to every
email I send. I wish there was a way to turn off all facebook messages or at
least send an auto-reply saying that I rarely respond to facebook messages.

------
AznHisoka
Does it give you a friendly email address or is it just random numbers (or
your fb id)? For instance, if your facebook username is "AznHisoka" do they
display aznhisoka@facebook.com ?

~~~
itsprofitbaron
If you don't have a username then currently its your FB id although, if you do
have a FB username then the @facebook.com email is the same.

~~~
Zev
I didn't set a Facebook username, and Facebook force-assigned me one for this
email address.

~~~
itsprofitbaron
I'm assuming you have timeline as I still have friends on Facebook who don't
have it and their user number = fb email

------
namank
Well, this is actually a good thing given Facebook's mission, "Making the
world more open and connected."

To do this, you have to have public profiles. Do you want your personal email
to show up on public profiles? But Facebook email, on the other hand, probably
doesn't matter (at least not right now when the "open" paradigm is still in
infancy.). Its OK to be shown to random people and search engines and other
features that come down the pipeline.

------
thefreshteapot
A few weeks ago, my facebook account appeared in the list of "linked to your
facebook".

I deleted that connection, yet still my email address has changed to this new
facebook account.

Unhappy.

------
jbverschoor
Crap thing changed the primary email address of the contacts n my iphone ios6

~~~
taysh555
?

------
wwweston
It's a brilliant plan, really. What they really wanted is for everyone to list
their real email address, but they knew that if they forced that, everybody
would be up in arms, so they forced the opposite change instead.

;)

------
biafra
Does anyone know how to forward that address to a real email address which I
can access with an email program? Is there an Facebook API for those Messages?
Facebook chat can be easily plugged into my XMPP client (except for group
chats).

I'd rather not delete that address because I do not want someone else to have
it. But as it is now the email ends up in a subfolder of Messages called
"Other" and I am in no way notified about them unless I happen to click on
Messages and recognize the small unread count beneath "Other".

This is really useless.

------
invisible
The sad thing is that Facebook probably thought "Hidden from Timeline" was the
appropriate setting since every opt-out thing they've done in the past has bit
them in the ass. Now they do an opt-in for "Shown on Timeline" and they get
bitched out.

The only unfortunate thing is that you cannot see emails to which you should
have access to that are not marked as "Shown on Timeline". Complain about bad
UX, not a security (in some ways) setting that is opt-in.

~~~
parfe
No, they hid my previously viewable external email address and replaced it
with their own.

Facebook literally tried to hijack communications intended for me.

------
systematical
Reeks of desperation, but really who cares?

------
leke
I can just see it now. There will be ads with your face endorsing products
related to email correspondence.

------
motters
I assume that this is an attempt to take advertising revenue away from other
webmail providers. So if facebook's users become predominantly known by their
facebook email address then their friends will just begin sending directly to
that address and bypassing other systems.

------
vilya
This has got me thinking that it's time to ditch Facebook. I'd like to use
Google+ because I think they're more likely to be a trustworthy steward of my
data, but I find the UI really confusing. Are there any other realistic
alternatives?

------
hcarvalhoalves
You what this is? This is money people having too much say on the product.

I have no doubts this is so they have one more metric to impress (number of
emails exchanged thru Facebook). Then they will proceed to selling paid
messages for advertisers.

------
snitzr
I checked my settings and already hid my facebook.com email. My non-facebook
address was sill visible. Anyone else not have the problem from this HN
article link? I keep up on my privacy settings.

------
liamgriffiths
Not sure if it is related, but I noticed my "Political Views" entry was also
removed quite recently. Was previously "other". Anyone notice similar changes
to user info?

------
melvinmt
Displaying FB addresses is not so bad, what I'm more concerned about is that I
just tried sending mail to some of my friends' facebook addresses and nothing
shows up..

------
washedup
"Force" seems a little strong. However, I am surprised I heard nothing about
it until the change was already made. That's the part that makes me uneasy.

------
aniro
The Manson Family. Note that "family".

A controlling psychopath or cult requires cutting off access to outside
resources, preempting a possible escape path.

No different.

~~~
pcwalton
Could we _please_ not take the trendy HN cynicism so far as to equate Facebook
with mass-murdering serial killers? It's a _social networking site_.

~~~
aniro
My point was not to equate the murderous behavior. I see that you might find
such a comparison distressing.

Facebook is circling the wagons on its user base. I see no one this benefits
other than Facebook itself.

While promoting effortless and frictionless sharing of every last minute
detail of daily life and thought within the Facebook "family", they are now
very actively creating massive amounts of friction in order to prevent people
from sharing with the same people anywhere else.

They are closing the exits in a defensive move to prevent people from leaving.

This is not good social behavior. This is what cults and psychopaths do in
order to exert control.

This looks like the behavior of an entity with mal intent.

------
jimhefferon
And, they won't let me enter "Scheme" as a language. It is tyranny.

Years from now, when people say "remember 2010 and Facebook?" I'll remember.
:-)

------
geoffhill
Just go into your About Me and enable "hidden from timeline" for the
@facebook.com email address. Now everything is back to normal.

~~~
bitskits
The fact that you can easily change it back doesn't make it ok for FB to make
these kinds of sweeping changes. Again, FB shows its poor stewardship of user
account data. I'll happily continue only using G+.

------
pwpwp
Outrageous, IMHO.

------
kespindler
Alright, I'm tired of this. Can everyone please shut the hell up about
Facebook 'forcing' people to change their e-mail address? Facebook isn't
forcing you to do shit.

They changed the _default_ e-mail address that appears in your profile. I'm
happy about this. It means all my Facebook friends have a way of contacting me
that isn't my primary e-mail address, meaning that type of communication is
easily compartmentalized and thus taken care of.

------
jusben1369
That's it! I'm canceling my subscription to Facebook. Oh wait. Oh yeah.

------
cefarix
So that's why I've stopped receiving spam to my GMail account.

------
jorgecastillo
Thank god, I don't have a Facebook account.

------
shellox
Facebook is the electronic total surveillance, just on a voluntary base. They
have enough users and nobody seems to care much about it, so it won't get
better.

------
saket123
I really feel this is the right moment to give other social networks a chance.
I am so tired of FB and all their antics . If only my friends were there on
G+.....

~~~
jsilence
If only other social networks started using distributed social protocols like
OpenID, Activity.streams, Salmon, OAuth, FOAF.

Don't crave for a nicer walled garden. Instead start tearing down the walls.

~~~
saket123
I am really glad that G+ does not give right access to external apps. It
prevents the network from getting spammed , help to maintain cleanliness of
the content and really helps in relevant discussions rather then water my farm
kind of posts.

------
lucian303
This is good for a lot of ignorant users who don't know they're displaying
their real email to the world.

------
rhizome
"Forces" is too strong a word, IMO.

~~~
sp332
You can't avoid this change, so yes it's forced.

~~~
rhizome
It didn't replace my addresses and there are two other stories on the front
page about this, so it looks rather linkbaity.

~~~
ealexhudson
Did you check your profile, not your settings? My email settings were
unchanged, but on my public profile they were different and had been set to a
facebook address.

I think it's easy to understate the importance of this, personally, and don't
mind the multiple stories. I'm extremely annoyed at this - I don't want this
email address, that I do not control, be published as some kind of contact
point for me.

