The Importance of Verifying User Email at Web Check-In

Question

I know this question is crazy, but my client client requires that the email check be removed from the registration process (they believe this prevents registration). I would like to receive feedback from the programming community as a whole regarding their experience and opinions regarding registering and checking emails - and the possible consequences of removing this guarantee.

Answer 1

I am on their side - 95% of websites do not really need an email address, they just collect it, because all the other registrations on the Internet that they saw collect them. If you are worried about spam, use captcha; Email is a terrible way to stop automatic registration. With sites such as Mailinator to give people instant emails and BugMeNot to save people from registration problems like yours, you should avoid making your registration more complicated than necessary. Stack overflow is a great example - you don't even need to register to ask / answer questions.

Answer 2

I assume that the robots will not worry about the registration process. Your average simple-minded robot is simply unpacked into a form that does not require any other actions (authentication, identification). The simple action of requesting one or more additional clicks will prevent most simple “attacks”. If you look at the blog site for Coding Horror, they use captcha with a permanent post word.

On the other hand, while a few extra clicks will hold the silent robots, they will not hold human spammers, pranksters, grippers, etc. But then again, the extra email addresses are pretty simple, so if someone really wants to fill your site with junk that they can.

My conclusion is this: I think you will get from 10% to 20% more "garbage" on your pages and 5% and 25% more "desired" calls, depending on how much it bothered your potential customers, Thus I do not see much harm in removing the email barrier.

Answer 3

Email is important for identifying a user, for example, when they forget their password. If the email check is configured in such a way that users cannot log in until they confirm their email address, I also think that it interferes. The application should allow the user to log in and use the application and configure it so that the user must verify his email address for a fixed number of days, for example, a week. If they haven’t blocked their account,

On the other hand, if we need to remove the email check, I think we will need to add a feature similar to the basic email services that will allow the user to reset their passwords in the absence of a valid email address.