[GlowHost.com]

Good information, I will look into it.

But one thing to consider is, if email validation worked as intended, you would not have any bots. The bots are able to get past this process. So having it means an extra step for your human visitors. So ask yourself the question of if human validation is more important than putting all new registrations in the newbies group thereby limiting the damage potential a bot can do...

I agree with you that if this problem exists, we should try to get it working as intended. But I see not much value in email verification these days considering the bots get right by it and there is always a chance your legit users have the verification email undelivered due to many email factors. You might actually end up loosing legit users which is the opposite of what you are wanting to do.