After years of trying to get its users to hop on the “@Facebook.com” email address chain, the social network has stuck a fork in its email service, because it’s pretty much done. Once users switched their email addresses away from @facebook.com as the default back in 2012 though, it’s likely that many people won’t even remember that such a thing existed.

Now of course, we’ll take a moment to commiserate with anyone who does use the email address, but while it was touted as a “Gmail killer” at the beginning, the Facebook email experiment that started in 2010 just never really caught on, points out The Verge.

With a new update Facebook is letting users know about this week, any emails sent to users via their @Facebook.com address will be forwarded to their primary email address on file. While other media outlets report that there’s an option to turn that auto-forwarding off, there isn’t — at least, not yet.

“There will be a way to turn off forwarding,” a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed to Consumerist. “Once the changes roll out in early/mid-March, under the General Account Settings —> Email —> there will be a checkbox that gives you the option to stop using your Facebook email address.”

If you don’t have any other email address other than that, well, you don’t need to do any forwarding but you should check out another option. But that’s probably not the case, admits Facebook.

“Most people have not been using their @facebook.com email address,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Verge, confirming that the email service is effectively being put out of its misery.

The email feature didn’t have email subject lines or even cc’s and bcc’s, making it relatively user unfriendly, especially with plenty of other free email options out there.

Again, if you don’t want someone figuring out your @facebook.com email address (by simply pasting your profile page’s URL before the @ symbol) and pestering you with unsolicited you’ll want to turn off that forwarding feature. Which will basically turn the lights out for the address all together. That is, once that option becomes available.

Facebook retires its troubled @facebook.com email service [The Verge]

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