We’re making this change because most people haven’t been using their Facebook email addresses
This week Facebook started phasing out Facebook email. Sort of. “When someone sends you an email,” says Facebook, “the email will be forwarded to the primary email address on your account.”
Facebook says that when someone sends email to your Facebook email address, it “will no longer go to your Messages on Facebook.” (Who knew that it did?)
Facebook explains that “We’re making this change because most people haven’t been using their Facebook email addresses.”
Now that’s a big surprise. Not.
As they phase in the change, when the change gets to your account, you will see this message:
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[Name], we want to let you know about an upcoming change to your Facebook email address: name@facebook.com.
When someone sends you an email at that address, it will no longer go to your Messages on Facebook. Instead, the email will be forwarded to the primary email address on your account: [your email address of record with Facebook]
We’re making this change because most people haven’t been using their Facebook email addresses, and we wanted to make it easier to view all your emails in one place. Plus, we can focus on improving our mobile messaging experience for everyone.
But here’s the thing: the email will still be going through Facebook. They may or may not be keeping copies on their servers. Even if they aren’t, there will certainly be a record of that transaction. And, should they decide to reconsider, they can always stop forwarding that email to your personal account at any time.
And, and this is important, in the meantime, Facebook has just created a brand new conduit for spammers to spam your personal account!
As of the time of this writing, there seems to be no way to disable your Facebook email address, which, if this doesn’t change, means there is no way to stop someone from using your Facebook email address to get to your personal email account.
Bottom line? Program your email spam filter to reject or delete anything addressed to [your user name]@facebook.com, and if you actually were using Facebook email, give your correspondents your personal email address and having them write to you directly.
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