Help:Email confirmation
To avoid the possibility of spammer abuse, Wikipedia now requires that user e-mail addresses be validated prior to the use of e-mail features. This ensures that:
- It's not possible to send user-to-user email with a fake "From" address.
- It's not possible to use the user-to-user email system to mail people who aren't registered users.
This only restricts user-to-user e-mail. You can log in, edit pages, etc. without confirming your address (and you are not required to enter an e-mail address at all to register; it remains completely optional).
If your account was registered prior to March 2, 2006, your existing address (if any) has not been automatically confirmed. You can check your address confirmation status in your preferences and can confirm it from there.
Accounts on each wiki are separate, and if you have multiple accounts you will need to confirm each separately.
- When a user adds or changes the e-mail address during account creation or on the user preferences form, the wiki sends a link for confirmation to this address; the address remains marked as unconfirmed until the user has followed the link which was mailed. All enhanced mail functions only send mails to confirmed addresses, and nothing is sent to unconfirmed addresses.
- The status (unconfirmed or date/time of confirmation) is always shown beneath the address on the user preferences page
- E-mail addresses are currently not checked to be compliant with RFC-2822 when they are stored in the database. This is issue of bugzilla:959. Users should verify their email address is deliverable before entering it.
- If a user changes their e-mail address to another, non-empty address, the wiki automatically sends a link for confirmation.