Email activation, is it still relevant?

It is only required if you are a US citizen running a site hosted in the USA. Non USA citizens would not come under that law.

That doesn't automatically make it useless, though.

It's required by law, so it has a purpose, if not to everyone then to those who have to abide by said law.

If it has a use to someone, then, by definition, it's not useless.

I do not believe I said it was useless

No you didn't. The "useless" was per the post previous to Ryan's directed at Cheat Master.

But you did restate what Ryan stated, which means the translation was sound.

For a community, I think it's okay for email validation. For an ecommerce site, the quicker the sales funnel, the better. Do you really need their name to take their money? No, just their money.

eh?

Ryan was wrong - or partially wrong.

Or did mis-understand you?

Misunderstanding on my part, I guess.

I always heard it was if you, or your server, were located within the US. Not that it had to be both.

I send out a monthly newsletter to my members and sometimes more often if we have important events. It is helpful to make sure the member's email address is legitament, otherwise I would be making these newsletters for nothing. I did experiment with turning it off for about a month, and saw no difference. But what I did see is a ton of fake emails being used for example: asdfas@sdasadf.com

Its still relevant to those few spam bots who cannot get passed it so its worth doing, IMO. If you can stop a few, why not stop a few?

If you are still getting spam... I can recommend two options...

A.) A StopForumSpam.com modification which most forum software has a modification for. This blocks an extreme amount of spammers however, it may block actual users here and there due to IP changing. If you do use it, I recommend setting it to NOT scan usernames as many common usernames are blocked. For example "Shawn" a common username I register with is blocked by SFS. It could deter someone from joining if they cannot use their desired username.

B.) Questions and Answers... This is the best anti-spam modification there is. Simply create questions and answers and block spam. Don't use silly math or "are you human?" type questions though as they can be easily solved by Xrumor and other spam bot programs. Instead use a question that is related to your niche and somewhat difficult. For example, I have a forum that is a support forum for an SMF modification I am developing. One of my Q&A spam questions are "What does SMF stand for?" and of course the answer is "Simple Machines Forum". Make things like that which relate to the niche

Stay away from CAPTCHA, its completely broken (reCAPATCHA is too) and I know of a company in India that will solve 1000 of them for $1.00 USD. Of course I don't use them because I don't spam but I research it all because I want to know the latest spam combat methods