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When viewing a user page on the full site, moderators (but not SE Employees) see a little "click to show" link in the email address field. Clicking this reveals the user's email address (obviously).

Screenshot

However, on the mobile site, when going to a user's page, their email address is already shown. (Sorry, no screenshot for this.)

I imagine that the reason the email address is hidden by default is to protect the user's privacy; so that moderators see that information only if they decide to contact that user. I feel that users should be afforded the same protection whether the moderator uses the full site or the mobile site.

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    I'm not sure why the email field is hidden. If it is a privacy issue in the sense that a mod should not see the email default , then yeah, it would be logical to be consistent. But if it is more like "another person can look over your shoulder", then that is less dangerous on mobile devices?
    – Nanne
    Commented Feb 19, 2012 at 12:57
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    I agree with Nanne's second opinion. If it was really a privacy issue, it would be logged when a mod clicks on the show link.
    – Double AA
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 5:26
  • @DoubleAA Not sure bout that. An email can reveal personally identifying info about a user. In general, a mod has a lot of tools that can help identify people, but it doesn't mean it's prudent to go poking around in there without reason.
    – Hod - Monica's Army
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 5:51

2 Answers 2

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This was just a mistake waiting to happen, so it has now been implemented on mobile and the main sites for all personally-identifiable information on that page.

Per Double AA's suggestion, we're logging access to this data now as well.

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It seems this has been implemented for both the email and real name fields.

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    I was surprised to see real names now behind a link (and probably, err, generated a bunch of log entries while trying to figure out why that was happening). I guess it makes sense though; just never thought about it before.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 17:45

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