A NOTE ABOUT DATA PROTECTION. This topic is getting massive attention lately, which is a good thing. The European Union has recently passed, and is in the process of implementing, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) measures.
We support these measures and, because we have site users in the EU, must adhere to them if we want our content to be available to the 500 million people who live there. So we are including GDPR-compliant features in our sign-up form. We are also going back to using a "double opt-in" e-mail confirmation. You're going to start seeing many, many more sites implementing these features soon. We thought it worth the time to explain why.
