You may or may not realize that you have a Facebook email address. It's an @facebook.com address you can use to correspond with people on external email accounts from your Facebook inbox. Though it was called a "Gmail killer" when it first came out in 2010, it seems instead to have been D.O.A. As far as I can tell, no one really uses it. No one seems to want the Facebook inbox to be their main email account (with good reason). Facebook is trying to change that with a new little nudge. On your profile page, Facebook has taken the liberty of making your Facebook email your default contact address. (See right, and check your own profile.)
For me, this contact email was previously either my Forbes account or my Gmail account -- both of which I prefer to be emailed at. While I appreciate Facebook as a "White Pages" that allows me to reach out to just about anyone, I'm not a fan of the social network's screwy messaging system and the way it auto-sorts your email for you, putting emails from 'strangers' in a shadow inbox that's easy to miss. As a result, I barely check my Facebook inbox.
Whether you opted for one or not, you do have a Facebook email address. If you have created a Facebook vanity url (such as "https://www.facebook.com/kashmir.hill") then your FB email address is that vain phrase at the end plus @Facebook.com. If you haven't customized your Facebook url, then your email address consists of the random number Facebook has assigned to your profile -- which makes for a pretty lame email account. (See right.)
The presumptuous change to your contact preference was first noted by Gervase Markham on his blog. He objects strenuously to Facebook auto-creating email addresses for users and then trying to force those contacting them to use it. It's an interception of user communications under the light Markham shines on it:
In other words, Facebook silently inserted themselves into the path of formerly-direct unencrypted communications from people who want to email me. In other contexts, this is known as a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack. What on earth do they think they are playing at?
Security researcher Ashkan Soltani meanwhile calls it "slightly fishy to auto-replace your default email address with 'facebook.com' without any user consent." After all, it should be up to Facebook users to determine the information in their profile about how they want to be contacted, not Facebook. I hope they don't start taking other liberties with my profile page, changing my interests, hobbies, and "in a relationship with" to "Facebook. Only Facebook." I realize that there's research out there suggesting that oversharing on Facebook is as pleasurable as sex and eating delicious things, but I'm not that into it.
A Facebook spokesperson says the company has been updating Facebook addresses for users since April. Without specifying when exactly the company made this the default contract address for its users, the spokesperson says the site is "rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines."
"Ever since the launch of timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own timelines, and today we’re extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address," says spokesperson Andrew Noyes via email.
This is another in a long line of 'nudges' Facebook gives users to try to get them to spend more time on the site, and to make it users' sole destination when they go online. Facebook would love to be the all-inclusive resort of the Web, replete with complimentary digital daiquiris (that you're forced to chug) upon entry. But this change is more a shove than a nudge, potentially circumventing emails you'd like to go elsewhere.
To assert your actual contact preference, you have to go to your profile page, hide the Facebook.com address from your Timeline, and replace it with another address, assuming you want to be contacted at all.
Read more:
What Employers Are Thinking When They Look At Your Facebook Page
Facebook Plans To End The 'No Kids Under 13' Farce
Here's A Completely Different Reason To Be Skeptical About Facebook
