Something like you mention is what many forums use.

You enter a user name, password, e-mail address and you receive an e-mail with a link to validate your account.

re: "These little glyphs that give..." Those are used by sites that have been badly burned by spam and do a pretty good job but are not completely foolproof. There are some packages that do Char. recognition, designed to get past that. Doesn't seem to be that big a problem here.

But a small change to the "create" process might clean things up a little.

Roy