I wish requiring validation was still the norm. I get that services and sites want to reduce “friction” and get people using it right away, but anybody like me with fairly generic gmail address knows, many people don’t know their own email address. I must have hundreds of active accounts linked to that email that I didn’t sign up for (although I’m sure a lot of them can’t be logged into anymore and the people can’t recover their passwords). That account became unusable, I got my own domain account a decade or so ago to replace it but still look in there occasionally.

Please though, anybody implementing signups - if you are going to let people sign up without validating email addresses, put a “I didn’t sign up for this account” link in every email you send.