8 ms·

Facebook Changed Everyone's Email to Facebook.com; Here's How to Fix It

186 points by jhack 14y ago

AznHisoka 14y ago
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 14y ago
  It's a real, working email address that sends emails to your facebook "messages".
ColinWright 14y ago
Some context, from two days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
zerohp 14y ago
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 14y ago
  >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.
jaredsohn 14y ago
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.
invisible 14y ago
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.
- picklefish 14y ago
  I believe this is the non-dramatized version of events.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    The drama comes in Facebook automatically hiding your original email address, regardless of your original settings. There's nothing about that action that can be construed as anything other than forcing you into Facebook's messaging system.
- omarchowdhury 14y ago
  It is over-riding and replacing the normal email addresses.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      It replaced both of my public email addresses.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        Maybe something changed in the last, oh, 5 days?
seanmcq 14y ago
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.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  I confirm this as well.
- jedc 14y ago
  They did this a couple of days ago; I think I noticed it on Saturday...
  - nollidge 14y ago
    I'm willing to bet most news agencies/blogs sat on it until today to reach a more people.
- rogerchucker 14y ago
  Happened to me and my gf as well.. I can't make up my mind if this was meant for better privacy (by hiding our real email address).
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Same thing happened to me - but I got a notification. Then changed it right back again.
- rplnt 14y ago
  I think it helps more people than it hurts though.
  - peterkelly 14y ago
    In what way?
    - rplnt 14y ago
      By protecting their "private" data, that is, hiding their email address. For public profiles that is.
denzil_correa 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Facebook and privacy in one sentence. Seriously ;)?
mtgentry 14y ago
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 14y ago
  It's called abuse..
tubbo 14y ago
Am I the only one who's actually happy about not having my actual personal email exposed (even accidentally) on Facebook?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- entropy_ 14y ago
  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.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  Wait what? They exposed their own @facebook email address, not your email outside of the service... right?
swang 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    > 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.
wahsd 14y ago
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.
rdl 14y ago
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".
bschlinker 14y ago
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?
javajosh 14y ago
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.
wrekkuh 14y ago
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.
bradfa 14y ago
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".
akproxy 14y ago
Seems Zuck has lost it, after all.
smutticus 14y ago
Here is how to resolve the issue: http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
shellox 14y ago
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.
peterkelly 14y ago
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.
invdevm 14y ago
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 http://www.zurker.in/i-29371-ohhlpiiglq

186 points by jhack 14y ago

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 14y ago
It's a real, working email address that sends emails to your facebook "messages".

ColinWright 14y ago

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

zerohp 14y ago

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 14y ago
>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.

jaredsohn 14y ago

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.

invisible 14y ago

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.

picklefish 14y ago
I believe this is the non-dramatized version of events.
- freehunter 14y ago
  The drama comes in Facebook automatically hiding your original email address, regardless of your original settings. There's nothing about that action that can be construed as anything other than forcing you into Facebook's messaging system.
omarchowdhury 14y ago
It is over-riding and replacing the normal email addresses.
- rhizome 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    It replaced both of my public email addresses.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      Maybe something changed in the last, oh, 5 days?

seanmcq 14y ago

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.

aw3c2 14y ago
I confirm this as well.
jedc 14y ago
They did this a couple of days ago; I think I noticed it on Saturday...
- nollidge 14y ago
  I'm willing to bet most news agencies/blogs sat on it until today to reach a more people.
rogerchucker 14y ago
Happened to me and my gf as well.. I can't make up my mind if this was meant for better privacy (by hiding our real email address).
chris_wot 14y ago
Same thing happened to me - but I got a notification. Then changed it right back again.
rplnt 14y ago
I think it helps more people than it hurts though.
- peterkelly 14y ago
  In what way?
  - rplnt 14y ago
    By protecting their "private" data, that is, hiding their email address. For public profiles that is.

denzil_correa 14y ago

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 14y ago
Facebook and privacy in one sentence. Seriously ;)?

mtgentry 14y ago

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 14y ago
It's called abuse..

tubbo 14y ago

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

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
entropy_ 14y ago
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.
Karunamon 14y ago
Wait what? They exposed their own @facebook email address, not your email outside of the service... right?

swang 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  > 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.

wahsd 14y ago

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.

rdl 14y ago

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".

bschlinker 14y ago

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?

javajosh 14y ago

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.

wrekkuh 14y ago

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.

bradfa 14y ago

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".

akproxy 14y ago

Seems Zuck has lost it, after all.

smutticus 14y ago

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

shellox 14y ago

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.

peterkelly 14y ago

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.

invdevm 14y ago

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