> Services that allow sign-up without proof of email (eg. by clicking a link in a verification email) ownership are just obnoxious in general. I feel the oppos

> Services that allow sign-up without proof of email (eg. by clicking a link in a verification email) ownership are just obnoxious in general. I feel the opposite. Many services that force sign-up with proof of email (eg. by clicking a link in a verification email) ownership are obnoxious. It's annoying to have to give a valid email address to sign up for an account just to use a service that wouldn't be required to regularly send things to my inbox otherwise. This site does it right. Allow account sign up without any email address at all, and then allow users who want email from the site (even if just for something like password recovery) to add their address post-signup. Most of the time if someone signs up for something with an email address that isn't theirs (successfully or not) it's because they either mistyped their real address or they just don't want that service to send them spam or sell their address to others who'll spam them. I'd guess that when people are asked to give an email address where none should be needed people often try using a random address because they want to avoid the spam, only to find out they needed to click a link. which likely also generates a lot of unwanted junk in people's mailboxes, but it's hard to blame users who are just trying to protect themselves and don't know a better way. People tried things like "10 Minute Mail" or signing up for a bunch of anon email accounts at various free services like yahoo, excite, hotmail, and gmail but these days many free email services demand ID to create an account (or an existing email address that does) or addresses at those domains are blocked by websites who want something real to spam. For me, if whatever@example.com doesn't work I just won't use that service.