I just can't sympathize with this viewpoint at all. Your email address is the first thing you give out to your contacts, so that they can contact you. Before Facebook, anyone who wanted to contact you via the Internet would need to know it. A "friends list" is totally useless without this one vital piece of information.

So "friends" need your permission to email you ? I am comfortable with the idea that my friends will store my email address in their personal address book (or data store)...

A problem here is that the 'download my data' feature doesn't let you download any sort of primary key for your friends. A name is not a primary key--I have many friends with the exact same name.

Could you explain this ? I am confused now.. I was under the impression that your email address is not exportable if you do not display it http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy. So is not similar to me manually writing it down on paper ?

You would have a point if I couldn't see your email by clicking on your info tab...