I think you're trying to make things too difficult. I've done something similiar on some sites I've designed - I'm simplifying it greatly for the sake of brevity.

Simply - when you have the person sign up - assign a random value to their database entry.
Have this value be a simple random number, say "58390".

Then mail them the url to an "activation" script. Something like http://yoursite.com/activate.pl?username=bob&code=58390

Then have the activate.pl script parse the variables and cross reference that random number (using the username) with the one that was assigned.
If that number matches the correct one for user "bob" then go ahead and make his account active because you know you have a valid email now.

You now know that this user has a valid email - without forcing them to type crazy random passwords. Only one click.
Hope this helps. You can get fancier, but this basic concept has worked for me.

In reply to RE: Mail-reply user registration by Lance
in thread Mail-reply user registration by athomason

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.