In this day of social websites where nearly every site you go to has a social-networking component a new and dangerous trend is developing; websites asking their users for their email password. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror just did a good summary of why this is bad and I can't agree more. If you are at any site that isn't your actual email account don't give out your email password. It may seem like a good convenient way for the site to help you find your friends on the site but trust me, in the long run, it isn't worth it. Email your friends separately and find out if they have an account the site. If nothing else in the Atwood article makes an impression please realize the possibly serious repercussions of sharing this password.
The best way to illustrate the problem is to consider the following scenario. If you use online banking at all and you, for some reason, can't successfully login to the online banking site what do you do? You typically need to reset your password and, in doing so, the bank would email your password. Anyone who knows your email address and password could do the same thing and bam they now have access to your online bank account. Not a pretty picture! Granted a lot of places also make you answer special questions etc in order to reset your password but not all sites do so it just isn't worth the risk simply to find your friends on a social site.