When I sign up to Facebook and use their contact list importer, they are using the private email addresses of my friends to link me into their network. When I export my social graph, Facebook will not return to me the email addresses I gave it when I signed up.
Either way, all this bluster is a red herring. The article has it right: Facebook is outright lying when they claim this is about protecting its users--people who have explicitly agreed to include themselves in my social graph in the first place. It's about owning the social graph.
Either way, all this bluster is a red herring. The article has it right: Facebook is outright lying when they claim this is about protecting its users--people who have explicitly agreed to include themselves in my social graph in the first place. It's about owning the social graph.