Activation E-mails
 

Am I the only one getting alittle annoyed with these on sites lately? Seems like I keep getting instances where either I don't get the e-mail for hours or don't get it at all. This is especially bad when the site has no way to pick "Resend Activation", as then I have to register with a different name then the one I originally chose and in some cases can't use the same e-mail address.

Also, no it's not my spam blocker since I check my spam folder when I do this.

Yeah it's so damn annoying. Especially when you have to register to the site to just read one topic you searched for on Google or something like that.

ANnoying, but (slightly) understandable. This way, they can keep tabs on new members in case their are old members who caused problems.

My advice is to make a specific e-mail just for activation e-mails. This way, it's all in one place...and you can avoid potential spam from those sites as well...

What mortis said.

As a web programmer, I can assure you e-mail activation isn't going anywhere any time soon. Is it perfect? No. But ensuring that an e-mail address is real before letting someone do anything is the first step towards any sort of accountability in a system. It's a necessary but not sufficient part, if you will.

Bugmenot.com - login with these free web passwords to bypass compulsory registration used to be pretty nice for these sorts of things, but I haven't used it in a while so I don't know if their database is very up to date.

The only problem I have with sites like this is when they use message boards to host their files. I've had to sign up for several boards lately just to download programs or patches. I guess it does cut down on bandwidth, but it can be tedious; especially when the automated mail system doesn't work right away. It's clever, though, I'll give them that!

It doesn't help that one of the more recent *chan pastimes is to change all the passwords en masse.

For things like posting on message boards and shit like that, activation e-mails make sense. For reading news articles, it sucks - that's why there's bugmenot, I guess.

I'm kind of torn on downloading though. I think it's retarded but then again it's not that much effort, and I know site owners like to have stats on how downloads go per person.

If you sing up then download the file, would that not waste more server space to store your information indefinably and send e-mails than to just allow you to download the file? To me this only makes sense if they are selling off your information.

Anyone who complains about these will receive 10 from gamingforce as punishment. :tpg:

They don't bug me. I always get them quickly and have email open in a tab anyway.

I do dislike these when I am after a single file that I am very interested in on random sites and then am greeted with the whole activation process. Also compounded when it ends up in the junk folder as is the possible case. Fortunately, I am glad that they haven't resulted in any mass spammage to my email afterwards to my knowledge.

I actually now wonder if anyone has ever stopped to think whether it's worth it to download that one or those couple files they are interested in and used the activation email as a stop and think point. As for me, I check out other sources first sometimes since some other places will have what I'm looking for without the need to register and all.