I agree it's a little overblown. But Github should really figure out quickly how to not expose emails like that.

I think many developers don't realize how accessible it is -- typically the email is set in some .git profile that you set up once, maybe not even in connection to github. It's not obvious that when you're using Github, your email from that file is being made public.

Also this is somewhat worse than your typical email leak because the email address can be tied to all the github activity, which in many cases includes a lot of professional activity. Targeted phishing (aka spearfishing) has a lot more to go off of.