It's irresponsible to expect your users to care about their privacy, just as it's irresponsible for a doctor to expect his patients to care about their health a

It's irresponsible to expect your users to care about their privacy, just as it's irresponsible for a doctor to expect his patients to care about their health as much as he does. Your duty, as a provider of web services, is to be far MORE concerned with your users' privacy than they are themselves. You know about these things; they don't. They're trusting you. So do the right thing. Don't add to the problem. Don't add to the list of sites that subtly enforce the very false notion that it's safe to share your email credentials. It's a bad idea even if you do trust the site to be careful. Every site that has my email credentials, even for a moment, is another potential failure point of the worst kind. Steal my twitter login, fine. You post some garbage, and I have to clean up a mess. Steal my email, and I'm left broke and fighting with credit bureaus to clean up my reputation for 7 years. Most users don't care about these things. But the fact that about 100% of savvy web professionals are very concerned by this should give you pause before asking for email credentials on your site. Even if you're 100% careful with the info, you're helping the next guy make the case that it's ok ("everyone does it"), and he might not be so careful.