Your want of privacy is understandable; I belong to a bunch of Yahoo! groups where my email address is hidden. Thing is, IME, having an unlisted email address is part of the typical troll/sock behavior, at least on the SDMB. Seems like whenever a newbie comes along acting like a jerk, more often than not their email address isn’t listed. I wonder, out of all the handles that have ever been banned, what percentage has hidden email addresses.
Actually, as someone who has been part of the SDMB almost since our first days at AOL, I don’t really understand those who use their hidden email addresses as carte blanche to act like jerks. There was no way to hide one’s email while we were at AOL yet we still had all those trolls left & right. Didn’t stop them one iota.