Email address confirmation now required
May 5, 2007
The email address you use at BookMooch now needs to be confirmed. The next time you use BookMooch and go to the “add books to inventory” page or try to mooch a book, you will be asked to confirm your email address.
A very short email message will be sent to you with a URL in it. When you click on the URL in the email, your email address is confirmed.
You won’t be able to mooch or add books until you confirm your email address. This is what the page looks like that you’ll see until you confirm:
New accounts at BookMooch will be able to log in right away, and use all the features at BookMooch, except for adding books to their inventory or mooching books. Many sites won’t let new users log in at all until they confirm their email address, but I thought that was unfriendly, as that stops people from checking BookMooch out to see if they like it, and what we really want to do is stop actions that affect other members (adding and mooching) until we know their email address is valid.
There are a few goals with this change:
1) when you try to mooch from someone, there will be a greater chance that they’ll get the email message requesting the book if they confirmed their email address
2) if you have an anti-spam program, it’s an immediate reminder to set your anti-spam software up to allow BookMooch messages
3) we’ve had some abuse of the system, both with people adding an account and immediately mooching as well as (less frequently) adding lots of books that people have on their wishlist, causing spurious wishlist notifications.
4) with this additional step, we administrators can ban people who repeatedly cause trouble, and make it just a bit more difficult to hit us repeatedly
There was a bug with this for a few hours, but it should be fixed now. If you’re still having trouble mooching, post a message to let me know.
-john
Working today, thanks
Just mooched without a problem, thanks for fixing the bug!
It keeps saying it’s sending me an email, but it never arrives for me to authenticate my address. I know you’ve got the right address because other emails about mooches have arrived for me.
Help, please! Is there any other way of authenticating?
well its been now 30 minutes since the “you should get the e-mail any minute now”.. i thought it was immediate?
okay ….well……
nope, not in my inbox
not in my spam folder
suggestion – if when i’m signing up you told me the address to expect email from i could set my email up to accept it right away.
….still waiting
Dawn
Confirmation request did not come thru. Have checked spam folder, have checked everything I can. Please resend
I, too lost a mooch because of the glich in receiving the email asdking for confirmation. I see the necessity, I guess, for requiring this but surely there’s an easier and quicker way to do it. Why can’t we log in with our password each time before entering the site? Then we can go directly to the Bookmooch site and go on with our business instead of waiting for an email, responding and then logging in. That seems to be secure enough for banking online. What say you? Thanks, Pat
I have received the email and clicked on the URL at least three times without response. Thanks.
Hi there
I’m still having trouble mooching. no confirmation of email was posted. I’ve even switched my email just to get a confirmation again but still nothing.
i have removed all spam filters and added bookmooch.com on my safe list on my hotmail.com account and still i haven’t received the confirmation email from bookmooch site when i try and mooch a book. i am doing something wrong?
mike
I, too, am trying to mooch a book through Yahoo with no e-mail confirmation. Hope I DON’T lose this book. I, too, just received a mooch request and replied,so there is no spam filter nor one needed. Looks as if this system has some flaws! Otherwise, I love bookmooch!!
Helloooo,
Is anyone there to answer these questions as to how to get confirmed. I’ve done everything requested and still do not get a URL or email from Bookmooch. Help! I’ve have books to post and mooching I am missing out on. Thanks for your help!
I have hit the url to confirm on my new account in the e-mail and still cannot add books- am getting the need to confirm message again. Please advise.
I’m also having trouble with receiving the email that you sent “right away”. It’s not in my inbox or my spam folder.
Still not receiving the email to confirm my address and be able to add inverntory and mooch. Please fix this. I have my spam guard turned off and also used yahoo as my email.
I haven’t received my confirmation email either.
Ugh, send me my confirmation email. So frustrating! Not very user friendly website.
HELP! Send me the confirmation email. I cannot mooch books. So frustrating and user unfriendly website. Thanks
When does the mail with the confirmation link come, i got my Thanks for joining BookMooch! mail
Looks like I’m just one in a LONG list of people who have never received the confirmation email. I have tried my main email – then I switched over to a Yahoo! account. I have not received on either.
I joined last night and have still not recieved a confirmation email. I checked my spam box and nothing- How can I get the confirmation email- Obviously there are some issues that need to be resolved with this additional requirement, otherwise your basically turning potential new members away- Please inform me how to get the confirmation email.
I finally got a confirmation email–it was delivered to my mailbox this morning around 1am, so within 6 hours of posting here. Thank you! I hope you can straighten out the trouble in order to avoid this hassle in the future, as the system looks great otherwise.
I should note that I switched to an alternate email address and tried again and it worked this time… but only after losing a book I really was excited about…
My suggestion: Set up a gmail account at Google expressly for BookMooch and have that account forward to your regular email. This confirmation process seems to work with gmail.
Yesterday, I switched the mail server software out that BookMooch was using (from Sendmail to Postfix) and deliveries seem to be more reliable now.
I was able to get my notification both to yahoo and gmail, where previously gmail was iffy.
Hopefully, this problem is (mostly) fixed now.
- john, Lord of Mooch
Has anyone else nnot been receiving request emails since the switch? I check into my account here and there and have found 3 requests, but haven’t received any e-mails. Do I need to change something?
My e-mail browser (AOL) has a fault that will not let me “click” to a URL. I can only cut-n-paste an address to the browser address field. Be sure the URL address is copiable, or we’re out of luck! Yes I’ve tried a dozen times to get AOL to fix it, but it apparently requires an origanization that cares about its clients.
I finally got my confirmation, but in the process I’ve missed out on two mooches of books I really wanted. I realize this is a free service and you’re putting a lot of time & effort into making things work. But this whole e-mail confirmation thing really sucked.
I mean why not just send everyone an e-mail to log into their accounts by a certain date & time & confirm their e-mails on the site? Those who don’t will be suspended as it’s presumed their e-mails are no longer valid.
Thanks,
Maggie
I’ve tried to confirm my email over and over again. On one hand, it does comes through when I use my myway.com or livejournal.com address. However, on the other hand, it keeps on tell me I’ve confirmed from the wrong email address.
Really, this is frustrating. Not very userfriendly, this new policy.
Trying to do the right thing by giving away my old books. I have a gmail account and I checked the spam filter, nothing. There are many other ways to implement email verification without having to block access to the site by people who saw that you have a great idea and want to do the right thing. For one thing you can add a link in the account page to send the email again. Also, I got the first email with several links in it and my username and password in plaintext (which is poor security).
actually it does take a whole day before they send the email, i checked and thats like forever
I also lost a mooch and have three points in limbo that I would like to be able to use! Please fix this!
Good feature!