Collecting email addresses typically occurs during both social authentication and email account creation. It is standard practice and comes with the following important benefits:
Support
Getting back to our users on support tickets and confirming their accounts.
Community Engagement
Notifying users when someone replies to their comment
"Top Questions of the Week" and similar emails
Community Management
Notifying a user if they've violated community guidelines.
Notifying a user if we suspect suspicious activity on their account.
Communicating updates to privacy policies or terms of service
Having an email address ensures our users are directly informed. We hope that you understand our reasoning!