[SEMI-GEEK] Are activation emails needed – and if so – how do we convince you they aren’t spam?

Here's an odd but important problem, at least for us here at BlogBridge.

When you sign up for a BlogBridge account, we, like many other sites, send you a confirmation email to verify that your email is for real.

Truthfully from a security point of view, I am not even exactly sure what it proves. That at one moment in time the person creating the account also was able to receive emails at an arbitrary email address. So what? It's so easy to get a temporary free email account, that I am not sure what it does.

So that 's question one: does an activation email really provide any benefit to anyone? Any comments?

Now a question that has come to our attention is that in many cases a person's spam filter intercepts the activation email so the person never even sees it, and hence the account is never activated, and hence the account appears not to work.

So scenario: The sender and recipient both want the message be received, but there is a a big-brother spam filter (like Google Mail, which I think is the bestest) that insists on sidelining the email into the spam filter.

So that 's question two: Is there any way to assure a non-junk email actually makes it through? Any answers?