Facebook Says Your Email Is @Facebook 346
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.''"
Facebook logic (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:There is not even a way to remove it! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am so close to closing my Facebook account it is not even funny anymore.
Just do it.
I deleted mine over a year ago and haven't missed it for a second.
Yay , bring on the spam (Score:5, Interesting)
"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 [facebook.com]
So if I didn't want a public email address on my FB profile then why would I want one now?
Facebook falls on its face.. again! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bullpoop (Score:5, Interesting)
Also I think facebook really helped reduce chain emails (and forwarded jokes) since all the stupid people just go to facebook and share and leave me alone.
Re:There is not even a way to remove it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Excuse me? Personally I'd be angry as fuck if someone changed some way of contacting me without informing me.
I don't want to imagine what shitstorm was going on if MS pushed an update that "accidentally" changed your default browser to IE. Aside of the antitrust suit that slams them before the day is over. And, bluntly, I don't see how this should be different.
Re:Yay , bring on the spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Your Facebook email is based on your public username.
What this also means is that if you have someone's "public username", you don't need to see their profile to learn their email address. You can get the public username from any search or friend list, concatenate "@facebook.com" to it and start spamming.
Exactly, so, bring on not only the spam, but also fakemails / spear phishing
Re:Bullpoop (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say people are becoming forced to in some ways.
For example authentication. A number of websites are using FB for their authentication mechanism, with no way to just create an account outside of that. This seems to be increasing because it seems to be easy to implement.
Right now, if a site demands FB authentication, they are avoidable. For example, Spotify. Easy change -- drop them, pick up Rdio which has a better selection anyway. However, I dread a time where if one wants to pay a phone bill online, order a pizza, or log onto a MMO, one must cough up a FB ID or else go elsewhere.
It's easy to spoof (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:There is not even a way to remove it! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's makes little difference for spammers because Facebooks approach to spam filtering is, to put it mildly, "nuke it from space". Mail sent to you that isn't from a friend goes into the "other" section and generates no notifications at all. The only way to even know you have received such a message is to make a habit of going into Messages and manually polling the "other" section to see if there are messages there.
This is insane. The reason people fought so hard to build strong spam filters that let strangers could mail each other is that the internet is about connecting people, even people who may not already be friends. I am not the type to have histrionics over changes Facebook makes, in fact I don't remember the last time I got really annoyed about a change they made. Far more of my friends care about the forced transition to Timeline than this. But Facebook fucked up email totally, which is why I don't use my @facebook.com address. I'm sure the average Facebook user never corresponds outside their circle of friends, but I have projects and interests that often mean wanting to contact people who don't know me (and vice versa). So it actually matters to me that people can find my email address and use it. Silently changing my settings like this pisses me off, and the absolute bullshit their PR flaks spouted about it just rubs salt in the wound. "Making addresses more consistent" - since when is consistency of domain name a factor in anything? What possible benefit does that have for anyone except them? Ugh. Google+ gets this right, incidentally.
annoying as this was a data source for my phone (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There is not even a way to remove it! (Score:4, Interesting)
I frankly do not care about being left out by people who forget about me just because I am not on Facebook. With "friends" like those. . .