The reason I'd put it behind a password is that WordPress sites get hacked when they're not closely monitored, and this probably wouldn't be a site that I would be monitoring regularly.
FaceCrook has servers all over the world doing exactly that, no telling how many backups they have in use.
Digital information is never safe, I worry about my 5 bucks in my checking account I can't sleep at night.
I am not5 much of a computer guy, but I was involved in some mainframe work. We ran computers in tandem and just switched between them as they were mirrored but not communicating all the time. If one side went down, the other was fine. I have no idea if that would work on forums though. Does @Beth Gallagher have any ideas?
I used to do a little product management, and oversaw the RAID line of stuff. "Mirroring" was one of the 4 ways to configure a bank of hard drives to do real-time backups. I'm sure it's all changed since then...Better/Faster/Cheaper.
You use the email to create your account, to set/reset your password, to get help in case you forget your password, and to receive email notifications of Watched Thread activity. It's kept in the database of the forum, but does not reside where anyone besides a programmer or technical database administrator can really access it. Perhaps Ken might be able to get to them with some effort--one at a time--but not in bulk. Besides, people have to opt-in. And this would be something outside of the forum (because if the forum is down, they would not be accessible.)
Yes, I can see the email addresses, but only if I log in to my Admin account, and I would have to check each account individually. I also allow members to change their passwords and email addresses after registration so a valid email address is only required to register the account. After that, if you were to change it to a fake email address, your account would not be jeopardized, except that you wouldn't be able to recover your password without contacting me personally. Even then, I wouldn't be able to tell you what your password was, but I could change it to something else so that you could log in. Because some people use the same or similar password on more than one site, I don't want to have access to your password.