I was thinking just now and I came up with a very interesting solution for email verification. It's actually based off of how alot of spammers get your email: Dynamic images.
You could have a dynamic image display in the email that activates the account when loading it.

The only downfall to it is if your users are using a an email provider such as Gmail, the images will be blocked, but I have a solution for that too. You could have the image say "Congratulations your account has been activated". And then below the image in plain text write "If you do not see the image above please either display images for this email or click on [this link]" where "[this link]" is the oldschool activation link...

Just a thought.

That sounds interesting. Could it be done though? Can you check whether or not the email is opened? I believe old school style is more efficient though.

Well yes, if the image is on your server, and its a php image, it can run some scripts to activate the account if the image is viewed. This is how a lot of spam bots get your email. They send out pictures on their servers with variables such as the email address it was sent to in the url, and then it knows if you are a real live person or not.

No wonder I get more spam, I sometimes view those images just to see what it is exactly and lately I've noticed an increase in the number of spam emails I get. Its not as bad as my first account though which I used to get 30+ spam a day. Right now I'm getting less then 10 and it all goes in the spam box right away.

Yes it's never a good idea to do that for messages from senders you don't know.

But anyway, back on topic. I would actually like to see more websites actually using this technique. Not only is it more user friendly, but it is also very impressive to people who might not know how it works. If anybody actually uses my technique, i'd love it if they posted it here. I'm interested to see it in action.

This technique does remove an advantage of clicking an activation link, however. One purpose of verifying an email address, when signing up to something or creating a new account somewhere, is to confirm that the person who owns that email address actually wanted the account. Having an image automatically cause the verification to pass means that you lose the ability to ignore it.

Say, for example, someone types your email address into a newsletter registration form. You don't want that newsletter, and you didn't sign up for it, but your email address is on their list. They send out a verification email, with the subject "New Account". You open it, to find out what this new account is for, as you don't remember signing up for it. As soon as you've opened that email, despite the fact you never asked for the account, will never use it, and do not want the newsletter, you have an account and will start receiving the newsletter. With a traditional "Click here to verify. If you didn't ask for the account, ignore this message." you would never get that problem.

Ah, I forgot about that. I suppose that would be one of the primary reasons for haveing email verification. I was only thinking about email verification where you check if the email is actually a real one and not just made up. That's too bad, I thought I had a good idea going. Well i guess you bring up a good point.

This post has been edited by alex7h3pr0gr4m3r: Mar 5 2008, 07:16 PM