Hi,
I know that when I sign up to a forum to start posting, I hate when I need to open up my email address and verify my account. Often times, I can't even be bothered to do it.
But does it increase spam?
I would like to know everyone elses experience with this.
I have instant account activation (i.e. no email verification) and a single registration question that is relevant to the site. I receive less than one spam post a month.
(2014-05-20, 07:23 AM)Cameron:D Wrote: [ -> ]I have instant account activation (i.e. no email verification) and a single registration question that is relevant to the site. I receive less than one spam post a month.
Thank you very much for your input, I highly appreciate it. I love forums that have instant account activation, so I'll do what you do too.
Before freemail addresses, email activation was pretty successful for spam control. Also, I ran one forum for over a decade with no spams by disallowing all known freemail domains (a long list). But if freemail domains exist, and are allowed, then I think email activation has pretty limited effects on spam. It seems that all the spambots know how to whip up as many gmail and hotmail addresses as they like.
On the other hand, I doubt that people who can't bother to check their email are all that numerous and it seems likely that many of of those couldn't be bothered to post messages if they can't be bothered to check their email.
Having a validated email address is pretty useful when a user wants to use forgotten password type features, subscribe features, or when other users want to use the "send email to user" feature etc. It seems that if emails aren't checked, then you have a chance of having random unrelated people receiving emails from your forum and possibly reporting them as spam etc. (I actually haven't tested this so maybe there's something else that would stop myBB from sending emails to potentially unrelated addresses.)