I saw an annoying spam and I wanted to use the report function and I was told that my email address will be revealed to the moderator when I report a spam. I was temporarily deterred. Am I going to be receiving emails from a moderator as a follow up for a report I made?
Moderators who are hired by forum admins and do their moderation jobs in the forum. You can believe that forum moderators are not PM spammers but if they spam you like this, you can report it to forum admins for escalating investigations. I am quite sure that you don't have to make your report to forum admins because the issue will very unlikely happen.
What's the essence of revealing my email?
I don't understand it too even after reading
SMF User Help: Personal MessagingDescription
While email is a good way to correspond directly with members, it also has several drawbacks for forum purposes: you must open your email application to write and send the message, the recipient must open his/her email application and check his/her mail, your message will be mixed in with all the other mail and it can sometimes take several minutes to an hour for mail to reach the recipient.
As an alternative to email, SMF offers a faster, more private method. Personal messaging on the boards provides instantaneous delivery to the recipient's private mailbox. The mail is sent and received entirely through SMF, so neither you nor the recipient have to open another program or leave SMF. Personal messaging also offers both the sender and the recipient greater privacy because no-one's real email address is revealed. Personal messages show only the handle and name of both parties.
If a recipient isn't online, personal messages wait in the member's PM box until the next time he/she logs in and reads and/or deletes them. SMF Personal Messages is a self-contained, highly private email system.