Yes it’s needlessly intrusive to an extent, but you really should try and look at it from their perspective.
As someone who worked in the computer software field his whole career, I sincerely emphasize, I truly do.
But we're talking about recreational access to forums to discuss things like a video games with someone else.
To give up that level of personal information, information that's stored without clear legal specifications of what's done with it, that can be hacked and stolen and used for nefarious reasons, is a bridge too far.
It's putting the security onus on the user, where server security should be the onus of the server admins.