Ask HN: Why not verify users by making THEM send emails?
Email delivery (if you don't want to end up in the spam folder) costs $ these days. So why not turn the tables and generate a random string and put it into a mailto: link that the user is prompted to open? If your email server picks up the string anywhere in the body it confirms the user registration. Bounce rates would go up but depending on your CLV and CAC this could be highly economical.
Because you loose high % of users on each hoop they need to go through. Removing friction is one of the major ux tasks. This solution would have 80% falloff if it's not something users really want and can't find anywhere else.
This is why 90+% of our users login with one click google, it's just too much to manually insert data.
UX is way worse if they don’t have a mailto handler set up (I don’t on my work and personal laptops, for example, and on my phone it probably won’t open the email account I want to use with you).
This also relies on them having various antispam things set up in their DNS, otherwise you haven’t verified anything.
As other have said, it's not ideal, but if you are strapped for cash it's well worth considering.