As I'm sure you noticed, many of those sites are putting the password in the welcome/verification email, but this is not the same as actually storing it as plai

As I'm sure you noticed, many of those sites are putting the password in the welcome/verification email, but this is not the same as actually storing it as plaintext in their database. The thing to look out for is your old password in password reset emails, not welcome emails. And another one to add to the list: my brother's small business uses British Telecom for email hosting. Their control panel stores the password in plaintext.