Topic awaiting preservation: Confirm E-mail Address?

I've been noticing a trend lately for registration forms to require entering your e-mail address twice and it's starting to really bug me.

Example 1. Example 2.

I don't understand the purpose of a "Confirm E-mail Address" field. I see a need for a "Confirm Password" field, because you can't see what you've typed. Therefore, an error would go unnoticed, so it's safer to have a person type it twice to make sure they typed it correctly.

But I can see my e-mail address. A second field just forces me to shift+tab/copy/tab/paste. It's stupid. Stop it.

(Incidentally, it's for this reason that I find it funny that the second example above is for the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment.)

But what if your email address is ********@******.***? It would be good to retype it just in case.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

Not everyone will do a copy-paste (although I do), so just incase they made a typo typing in thier email address, it will be caught if the 2nd one doesnt match.

Mind you, I do find this annoying also.

Its probably better than the web admin having to deal with 'I entered in my email address for the confirmation email, but one never came!' requests from users, when it was really their problem in entering in the wrong email from step 1

(Edited by Kaniz on 12-21-2004 18:09)

I always type it twice, because if you make a mistake and don't notice, a) you won't get what you want mailed to you, and b) if what you type is an existing address, someone else will get your unwanted email. It's annoying, but better in the long run. For me it's quicker to type it again than to Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Tab, Ctrl+V anyway.