I think this is the point of the client side check though - if the user makes a typo (e.g. gamil.com) then the client side validation can prompt them to check, before the server sends the validation email and annoys the owner of the typoed address.

My point is that it doesn't matter if some arbitrary string looks like an email address, you need to check.

If it isn't valid the server won't annoy anyone. The problem is that the address is valid. And not theirs, it's mine.

The moment the users need to be careful, they will. Make the problem theirs, not mine.

"Sorry sir, the address you provided returns error" or "haven't you received the confirmation email YET? really? there are other customers in the line" and see how soon they remember the right address, perfectly spelled.

Even big ass companies like Paypal that have no problem freezing your monies, allow their customers to provide unchecked email addresses and send income reports there. (here)

You can (and should) definitely do both. But needing to validate that a user has access to the entered email address doesn't mean you should do away with client-side validation entirely.

You missed my point, I'm afraid.

I meant that it very much depends on the business-case (and hence laws and regulations) what exactly you'll have to verify, and therefore where you verify and validate it.

Do you need an address to contact people on? You'll must make sure that the user can read the emails sent to that by you. Do you merely use it as a login-handle? Then it probably only has to be guaranteed unique. Do you need to just store it in some address-book? Then just checking roughly the format is probably enough. "It depends".

> Do you need an address to contact people on? You'll must make sure that the user can read the emails sent to that by you. Do you merely use it as a login-handle?

Pretty humongous dick move to use someone else's email address as one's own login for some website, wouldn't you agree? What if it's a popular website, and the owner of the address would like to use it for their id; why should anyone else be able to deprive them of that?

And thus it's also a dick move from the site operator to allow those dicks to do that. So no, it doesn't depend: Just don't accept untested email addresses for anything.

Again: this depends on the business case.

Not all web-applications with a login are open for registration. Not all are public. Not all are "landgrab". Not all have thousands of users or hundreds of registrations a week. Not all are web applications and not all require email validation.

Some do. But, like your niche example proves: the business-case and constraints matter. There's no one size fits all.

> I'm tired of receiving mail from people that gave my email address as if it was their own.

Did you mean “receiving mail intended for people that gave my email address”? Because that's how I usually notice that they did.