What's The Point of E-Mail Confirmation?

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by Boofo

If they aren't doing spam in posts, you can almost bet they are doing it in PMs.

No they are not doing it in PM's either. My forum members immediately report any spam PM's and I am also very aware of what is generally going on on my forum.

We occasionally do get reports of spam PM's but it is never more than a handful out of the tens of thousands of PM's sent every year.

Originally Posted by Boofo

No, it is not wrong and misleading. Spammers look for sites like yours where they don't have to prove who they are. That makes dissemination of spam all that much easier.

Secondly, verifying a e-mail doesn't prove anything about the identity of a person. E-mail services don't verify the identity of any person creating an E-mail. The E-mail providers are running a business, they are not a government or international institution. They don't have any people who verify any documents or background of the person creating the email ID. Anyone can make a fake e-mail ID in minutes.

E-mail verification is useful for verifying the e-mail the member has submitted to you exists and occasionally it can help in wearing down trolls who keep re-registering very rapidly. But overall it has a negative effect on member registration and participation.

If you are not paranoid about verifying the existence of your members e-mail addresses then don't use this feature.

[Boofo]

Originally Posted by vijayninel

If you are not paranoid about verifying the existence of your members e-mail addresses then don't use this feature.

It has nothing to do with being paranoid. It is just good common sense.

[mrt12345]

Very interesting points here, I was wonder about these things myself. How about limiting just to face book registrations, it almost seem everybody is on facebook, ok you do get spammers on facebook but this kills the bots registration for now. I don?t know if vb will allows only facebook users to join, but I think it would be a cool mod to be made plus you don't need to worry about the email Verification ,facebook took care of that for you

[8thos]

How do I ban this troll's e-mail address? I don't want to accidentally ban all g-mail accounts, just this person's e-mail.

For instance, they registered with this email. sohhuser+88@gmail.com
I banned the troll and they came back with this sohhuser+99@gmail.com

If I banned sohhuser@gmail.com will they still be able to come back just by putting a + and a number a the end?

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by Octavius.

If I banned sohhuser@gmail.com will they still be able to come back just by putting a + and a number a the end?

Yes he will still be able to come back. Also banning e-mail addresses is quite useless for fighting trolls.

Also please stop making your posts completely in bold. Use bold only to highlight certain text which you want to stand out.

[8thos]

I've been bolding posts since 2001. I can't help it, it's a habit. I do it for my poor eyesight. Easier for me to tell when someone replies to my post in long threads.

[Simon Lloyd]

Originally Posted by Octavius.

How do I ban this troll's e-mail address? I don't want to accidentally ban all g-mail accounts, just this person's e-mail.

For instance, they registered with this email. sohhuser+88@gmail.com
I banned the troll and they came back with this sohhuser+99@gmail.com

If I banned sohhuser@gmail.com will they still be able to come back just by putting a + and a number a the end?

This might seem like a shameless plug, but, if you find out their user agent (in who's online) and use this mod https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=264932 you can stop them getting in

[8thos]

This chick uses proxies.

[Alfa1]

If you do not verify email addresses, then your site will send out email to non existent email addresses. As a result email providers will blacklist your site as a spammer. In time many of the major email providers will refuse your email.

[8thos]

Makes sense.