Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Says Your Email Is @Facebook
beaverdownunder writes "Facebook has been silently changing users' default e-mail addresses to their @facebook.com address in a move that Facebook claims was 'to protect users' and to create 'consistency,' but has been blasted by many bloggers and news outlets as 'Facebook's Lame Attempt To Force Its E-Mail Service On You,' and even characterised the move as a Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack on users' private correspondence. From the article: 'Many articles characterized the change as a ham-fisted way for Facebook to push its email system, which it first announced in late 2010. At that time the company said its goal was to integrate conversations across multiple channels of communication — text messages, Facebook chat, email, etc. Facebook seemed surprised by the reaction. 'We basically defaulted to show your Facebook address as we rolled this out, just to keep it consistent for everyone,' said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications. 'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing for people only to use facebook.com addresses,' Chin said. "That was not our intention. We want people to use whatever's easier for them.''"
Just went into my profile to try to remove / disable this POS and you are not even given the option to do so...
I am so close to closing my Facebook account it is not even funny anymore.
"That was not our intention. We want people to use whatever's easier for them.''
Whatever's easier for them is to use the e-mail address that they set up as their default before Facebook screwed with their settings. Changing users' settings without their consent is a great way to lose users. I should know, I dumped my Hotmail account for that very reason.
Funny how people are always surprised by the reaction they get when they forget to consider others when making decisions
So we made @facebook easiest.
To some degree I understand it though. Facebook hacks/bots becoming more and more common place. For 99% of normal users, they don't just have friends as "friends" ... and every one of those potential hack victims can see your email address and potentially harvest it.
Facebook should be aware by now that users don't like Facebook (the system) forcing some changes onto them, or changing their preferences to something "that is good for you". (See privacy settings, Timeline)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
E-mail addresses are surprisingly long-lasting. There are still many vans on German roads with addresses like "XYZ-Plumbing@t-online.de" from the early days of the public internet, when having your own domain was something that would have made you an "internet professional". Getting people to actually use an @facebook.com email address probably guarantees that Facebook will be around in 20 years.
"...a move that Facebook claims was 'to protect users' and to create 'consistency,' ... Yeah, right. Same shit, different day. I guess the amazing part is that they expect their lies to be believed.
How long before FB is hated and flamed as much as MS and Apple on /.?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
"Your Facebook email is based on your public username. Email sent to this address goes to Facebook messages."
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=224049364288051
So if I didn't want a public email address on my FB profile then why would I want one now?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
My primary email is hidden, and a junk dump address anyway
If anyone sends mail to my @facebook address it be ignored ... I have no idea how to even look at this!
Facebook has posting, direct messages, and chat why would I want an email?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Seriously
A facebook email address says one thing about you , you use facebook. So when your boss see's it and sticks in a friend request how do you tactfully say never in a million years.
There has to be a good number of people that you don't really want accessing your facebook page for one reason or another at least you can deny being on facebook if your privacy settings are set secure enough.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
"We want people to use whatever's easier for them." -- I think they omitted the rest of that comment. I sure felt like it ended "As long as it's @facebook.com, which is why we forced everyone rather than presenting them a choice at login."
My issue with Facebook as a hypocritical daily user, is that Facebook treats the website like it owns everything on it. Other services in the past have instead created a communication platform where an individual could be themselves. Integration, conformity, and consistency just feels like a bad sci fi movie.. a la Orwell...
Just tried to go to www.facebook.com - and got a 503 error.
In any case I wonder if there is a way to re-direct email to my so-called facebook email address over to someone else at facebook... or elsewhere for that matter?
And how many people threaten to quit are two entirely different things. Unfortunately many people won't even notice these changes let alone care
slashdot should have email aliases.
I imagine anonymous.coward@slashdot.org would be a pretty popular registration at paywalls. Maybe it already is.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I get a blank page going to facebook.com. Digging a bit deeper, using telnet I get:
Trying 69.171.237.16...
Connected to www.facebook.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.0 503 No server is available for the request
Server: proxygen/129
content-type: text/plain
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 13:00:35 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 0
Connection closed by foreign host.
Is it retaliation?
Here we go again!
Now that I've been off Facebook for a long time, whenever I see friends we actually have something to talk about, because I have no clue as to what's been going on with them. It's brilliant!
Try it! :)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I hadn't noticed this but in the last week or so I've noticed the appearance of ads masquerading as 'likes'. I'm getting all sorts of shit in my newsfeed on a regular (i.e. daily basis.) FaceBitch is definitely going out of its way to piss off users. Thank goodness for Social Fixer.
I just checked my own Facebook info page and discovered that while my gmail address was still "Friends/not shown on timeline," my new Facebook address is "Friends/shown on timeline." Depending on exactly is meant by that last bit, it could explain why I'm suddenly getting about double the spam in my Gmail account that I was getting a month ago. (I get email notifications from Facebook sent to me Gmail account, as I suspect most people do.) Thank goodness for good spam filters...
There's a good reason why I ratchet-down my email address' availability on web pages, and apparently Facebook isn't nearly so concerned (which, of course, comes as no great surprise). I'd be curious to know if someone whose normal address is set to "hidden" now has a non-hidden Facebook address.
Also, the line, "We want people to use whatever's easier for them" has a somewhat different meaning when you're actively making it easier for those looking at a user's info page to see the @facebook address, rather than the one the user intentionally put there. Either the staff is oblivious, or they're being dishonest about their intentions. (Not sure, given their track record with privacy and such...)
What Facebook should of done is add their e-mail address as a secondary, and keep their current email set to the default. I'm sure nobody would of complained if they did it this way. Is it really that hard to think of something like this, instead of forcing people to use their email address instead and going behind our backs and changing our personal information? They can't say they didn't expect this kind of reaction, it's too obvious.
I'd rather have the FB crap go to a spambox rather than my real email.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I don't have a Facebook acct and don't intend to get one. However it seems that these days the only way to send feedback to TV shows, politicians and other celebrities is to "Like" them on Facebook (and follow them on Twitter).
How can I send an ordinary email to these people?
So perhaps when then fb think im a bit dumb since i dont use there site (four years) they will tell me how to rejoin on there email thing (that i dont have access to) rather than to the email i use. I'm good with that foolery.
A better way to have handled this would be to send an email to everyone on the site and remind, or in some cases inform, them they have a @facebook.com email address that they can use and display on the site, with a way to display this if they so wish.
Facebook has shown, however, that they have no respect for basic privacy. There are many people that should never have a way to contact us. I wonder how long this will last now that sexual predators will have a way to contact children using this email address without even having to show up on their friends list first.
they are essentially reverting the internet back to what it was in the mid-90's.
"That was not our intention. We want people to use whatever's easier for them.'' -- BULLSHIT! They want to control and read as many people's e-mails as possible so they can show them relevant ads and make money. More people, more money, the end. What exactly do they think such an unbelievable lie will accomplish? Ironic, considering Mark Z is all about openness.
I'm surprised Facebook still requires an email to sign up. Seems like they really want to replace all open and closed internet communications protocols (except VoiP and games). I give it about two years before most consumers no longer have e-mail addresses. I don't really like it, but SMTP seems like a perfect target for the likes of Facebook and Google to replace, because it's so open, valuable and a bit clumsy/anachronistic.
You really deserve what you get if you use Facebook.
I suspect this is less about trying to get everyone using Facebook for their email and more about usurping any third party apps that will automatically sync with Facebook contacts (iOS 6 anyone?). All you're going to get now is a load of garbage contacts.
The entire purpose around user settings is to allow users to display what they want and to see what they want. So that means DON'T FUCK WITH MY SETTINGS. That means with every update don't check boxes that I didn't have checked before, don't force me to accept a change that gives me no way to say "No Thank You"
And the fact that Facebook was not prepared for the reaction it received is a bold-faced lie. If they didn't expect this reaction, it would not have be implemented so quietly. Facebook knew there would be controversy, again, thus the hush-hush.
On the other hand, Facebook is free to use, so it is in Facebook's interest to change the email address extension. If you were paying for your Facebook account do you really think there would be as many people on the site? Nope. So sadly, you're getting what your pay for, no fees, no freedom no privacy.
If you don't like the TOS, leave Facebook.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
While your suggestion would have absolutely been better, it wouldn't have served Facebook's interests as well. Their interest is to have the data that people send you in email. To get at that delicious, profitable data, they need to get people to send messages to your facebook email address. What better way to do that then to add it to your profile and mark it public? Now at least some people will send to that address and facebook gets to harvest the data. (Note that many people are saying it was set to public. Mine was set to not show in timeline and was set to friends only).
Facebook has put me face-to-face with the fact that my online "friends" all suck. Almost all of my network turns out to be people I knew in high school and haven't talked to in 20 years, half of them are religious or political nuts, and none of them are really my "friends". My real friends don't use Facebook.
Facebook is a fad. It's going to be a very long-lived fad, which is fine. But it's hard to see them as anything other than a clearinghouse for data that isn't worth distributing any other way. I do not care about what happened to you today in MobWars.
So if this sets the primary email to a Facebook address, and notifications are sent to the primary email address, and incoming email becomes Facebook messages, whose arrival triggers notifications, I'm sensing a bit of an obvious problem here. But looking over a friend's shoulder at their account, the Facebook address is not set to primary and in fact there appears to be no option to even make it primary.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
I make my email address widely available. Oh, and being a grown-up, I do have a LinkedIn profile as well ... but, being a grown-up, I don't do Facebook or Twitter.
'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing for people only to use facebook.com addresses,' Chin said, 'That was not our intention.'
Ahem;
Bullshit.
That is all.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications. 'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing...
Can someone please explain to me wtF she's babbling about? Did I, yet again, miss another round of an occasionally hilarious meme, further isolating me from the collective consciousness of my people?
The Admin and the Engineer
Cool. Another domain to add to my "do not even open it just auto delete it" spam box.
Interesting. Company beginning to fall apart, offer IPO, take money, screw with customers to speed up it's demise, run.
What a train wreck.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Facebook is FREE! Let's continue to complain about things we get for FREE! Seriously I am happy they are doing it. I am going to sign up for all sorts of weird shit now. This is the perfect spam mail account address.
What the fuck is a Face Book???
People are complaining about the changes to a 'free' website. Mmmmmmmm.
... they'll test the victims' pain threshold, trying to find a weakness they can exploit. Coming next week, Facebook takes out "protective" trademark for online use of your name.
I know of absolutely no one that uses facebook mail, and probably the vast majority have no idea it even exists. So anything that uses my or anybody else's facebook mail account is obviously a spammer who screen scraped it from my account. In a perverse way, this is a Good Thing because it attracts spammers and absolutely nobody else. It could actually be interesting to find out how quickly your facebook honey pot fills up which shows how much bad guys are paying attention to your facebook account.
I'm afraid I can't let you do that.
FB is fucked on multiple levels, and I could go into that in detail, however if you really want to be disgusted with them, read what they did to "regular" small time investors:
http://www.infowars.com/wall-street-bankers-secretly-scammed-facebook-ipo-buyers/
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I'm to the point, I want a setting where my wall is visible to no one but myself. It's not like I can post anything I want anymore since my grandmother discovered the internet machine...
This is the biggest joke of a tech company around. It's built around an idea that is, at it's core, letting everyone keep an online list of all the people they know and have dick-measuring contests to see who knows the most. Why people continue to be shocked when FB does these sorts of things is the only thing I'll never understand. This article could have just read "LOL! FB is at it again!" Surprise-o-meter on a scale of 1 to 10: potato
I didn't have any email addresses under my "About". Facebook didn't change my email addresses, it added the @facebook.com one to my About page. I was able to hide it, but you won't be able to get rid of it.
You can easily spoof FB messages to people using an unsecured SMTP server. I tried sending myself a message from my wife (not knowing my wife's FB or email passwords), and it worked; it looked as though the message were from her! Since there's no email headers to evaluate, you can't tell where it really came from. There is a little icon indicating that it is "Unable to confirm X as the sender." But it still shows up with her FB profile picture and full name (which I didn't provide in the email).
I know that was "only a movie" and "facts were changed" make it more dramatic, but why do I get the sinking feeling that between the constant changes to privacy settings, the shady, over-valued IPO that the basic leitmotif of the movie -- that Zuckerberg is a morally deficient opportunist -- is the basic leitmotif of the entire operation?
There seems to be nothing about Facebook and the way it is run that is honest or straightforward. I read the article on the NY Times this morning and the naked, unapologetic dishonesty on display was fairly breathtaking although totally and completely expected.
I can't say I will stop using the site, but I've always been reluctant to put much "serious" information in my profile. Most of it is silly (Religion: "I believe I'll have another") and I regularly check my privacy settings to see what has been unset.
Although lately it seems that people use it less for even meaningful textual communication -- it's just reposting dumb jpeg humor and I find myself using it less and less. More changes like this and I might just decide to jettison it completely.
"At Facebook, we value your ---- *bwahahahahahahha* Sorry, I was trying to do it with a straight face, but I can't. Let me try again..."
So wouldn't this be the easiest way to poison their database on you. Just subscribe to some mailing lists or arrange for some random mail sent to your @facebook address... Can you adjust it so that you don`t get any notifications of new mail?
Only dumb birds land downwind.
"Desperation is a stinky cologne."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Just checked and my primary email is still the one I signed up with, but my alternative is the Facebook one. Of course this is the first time I signed into Facebook in a year so I really could give a flying leap and would prefer if the notices go to an email I will never use.
Seriously though, if you are an "active" Facebook user, then you have switched back already or happily using the new one. There is no reason to complain about this at all..
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
"We want people to use whatever's easier for them."
"...We're just going to be the ones to decide what's easier for people."
/* No Comment */
Facebook can't change my email. They can't take over my DNS and reroute my mx records. All they can do is set up some address and collect junk on their servers.I don't even care what people looking at facebook think my email is. Honestly, i'd guess that 99.9% of the time if someone is using facebook to contact me, it's not going to be through email. As far as i'm concerned, this seems like a nice feature. keep facebook messaging routed to this honey pot they've set up on my behalf. Maybe they can set up a phone number for me too.
why people actually support a company who's only goal it is to monopolize the communication infrastructure, though it already threatens their privacy and exploits their power to decide what they show you and what not.
This mononpoly does not even care about privacy laws.
So why are there 900 M people who let exploit themselves by this company?
Sometimes I just wonder if people just are not able to reflect about their deeds.
Please come back to our service! We are the only ones that love you, and we NEED you to keep our quarterly stats looking good so please please all you defunct accounts just log in again so we can tab you in the active column and make our investors happy! Please come back and try and change your email address!
All we want is for you.. to log.. in...
All we want is... to.. give you love...
Please.... we're.... dying... this feels
so cold *
I have a farcebook account. I started it a long time ago, under my 'real name' solely to stop anybody else trying to 'imitate' me. I have never used it, except for now. I have just posted the following on my 'wall'. "This site is telling you to use an incorrect/unknown/un-used email address to contact me. Why? I object to this strongly!" I wonder how many 'likes' it will get?
Smivs on the intertubes!
I noticed this the other day. I sync my phone with facebook for many of my contacts. Now I have an address book full of bogus email addresses where they were correct before.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's what a public company, with a horde of shareholders, has to do. They're following Google in scanning your email to better target you with ads. It will be interesting to see what other things they do to try to squeeze money out of people. I predict that people will get fed up and Facebook will end up like MySpace, though it will take a few years.
email me at :
mark@facebook.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A better way to have handled this would be to send an email to everyone on the site and remind, or in some cases inform, them they have a @facebook.com email address that they can use and display on the site, with a way to display this if they so wish.
To be clear, you are suggesting that SPAM is better than what they are doing? I can believe it, but that is an awfully low bar you've set for them.
Meredith Chin, that is.
I've said it before and I'll say it again :
Facebook users get what they deserve.
Using Facebook and expecting to be treated well is beyond naive and well
into sheer stupidity.
They should probably stop calling it "My Profile" when it is actually "Facebook's Profile of You". Still, I get a free email to play with. Maybe I'll decide to send an email to all my friends facebook emails on a specific date and time telling them what I had for lunch that day and maybe they'll do the same... and maybe their friends will as well... just kidding...
So sayeth the Slashdot demographic as they stand in the cold and stare hungrily at the "cool kids" through the window.
But it's bullshit. Facebook stopped being about cool years ago, and it continues to pull huge traffic and hold onto enormous numbers of users. Why? Because it's not about being cool - it's about being useful, and they've pretty much mastered that.
Does this mean that all my facebook updates/reminders will go to my facebook.com address? Finally, I won't have to worry about what's going on with my facebook profile.
Now every time they turn email notifications back on that I don't want, it won't go to one of the email addresses I ever check... (It was already linked to my 'spam attractor' email that I only check once a week.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
IANAL, but isn't this a slam dunk as an anti-trust violation? They're trying to use a strong presence in one service area (social networking) to unilaterally force consumers to use a different service they provide (email), to the determent of competitors.
Not only did Facebook change my address, the "Choose Different Address" button doesn't do anything.
It is so NOT a social networking site.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing for people only to use facebook.com addresses,' Chin said. "That was not our intention. We want people to use whatever's easier for them.''
You have to use @facebook because using @gmail is really difficult. Trust us. Zuckerberg knows these things.
If they meant easier for them to snoop in your mails and make money of the contents. Their IPO put great pressure on the company to find new revenue streams, so they're exploring every nook and cranny to fleece their userbase for extra content to sell to corporations.
While I'm a user of the site, this brazen disregard for a user's preferences was a big red flag for me. They didn't even bother to ask! I know a user has no rights on Facebook, but at least they pretended not to predate their users outright. This action crossed that line. It's not your profile, it's Facebook's permanent register of your persona.
Perhaps it's time to seek greener pastures, the posts are mostly vapid nonsense and Reddit/9gag regurgitations anyway.
Because I saw this coming years ago...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
All my "real world friends" (including those I happen to be connected with on Facebook, LinkedIn and whatever the heck else) already know how to contact me. For all my other "Facebook friends" and the legion of advertisers with access to my Facebook contact info (not to mention any other merchants who seem to think they're entitled to my email even selling me stuff face to face) I'll be happy to have them hurl their spam down that bottomless pit Zuckerberg has been so kind as to provide, where I promise never to even take a fleeting look at it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing for people only to use facebook.com addresses
We want people to use whatever's easier for them
They're making their own system easier for everyone to access, thereby pushing for people to use facebook.com addresses.
For years, I had email notifications on my Youtube account. Then Google changed it over to a SSO model, and forced to associate my YT account with a Google account.
I stopped getting any email notifications. Half a year later, I discovered they were all in my unused gmail account. As it turns out, Google silently discarded my actual email address, and although you can add it back, it's a no-op, as they won't send notifications to the address you add. So you have to receive everything at a dummy gmail account, then forward to your actual email address.
I've had no problems with Facebook doing anything like this, because I have all of Facebook's domains permanently blocked.
See msg title
I signed up for FB because doing so got me a full month free of Hulu Plus (on a trial) instead of just a week. Since then, FB has served no useful purpose for me. BTW, Hulu Plus sucked, so even that wasn't worth the FB account.
Does anyone really wonder why the FB IPO was such a flop?
join diaspora* (http://diasporaproject.org/) ... at least until it becomes second F
I don't use facebook's database for contact information or even sync my contacts with facebook. people might have a hard time contacting me, but I won't have a hard time contacting them.
while