New weapon for SPAM'era?

Question

User interface

Not so long ago, quite by accident, I stumbled upon another function of the notorious social network. When I sent an email address in a message, I noticed that it had become a hyperlink. At first I thought that the social network started converting addresses to links like “mailto:[email protected]”, but when I looked at the link path, I was surprised: “ http://vk.com/[email protected] none.com". After clicking on the link, I saw a new way to send e-mail without leaving everyone's favorite social network. Digging into the js codes , my knowledge was not enough to find anything sensible.
1) Do you think this feature should be feared as a new way to send SPAM?
2) How will this feature affect e-mail providers (number of ad impressions in web interfaces, etc.)?
3) I don’t scour social networks so often, maybe it’s not such a new feature, but I haven’t heard it before. How long has this service been running, anyone tell me?

Answer 1

1. exactly as much as sending email from any server/hosting.
2. Of course not. There people in general use clients.
3. Quite a long time ago.