I've had a few cases recently where people are accidentally ending up with typos in their email addresses when they register or registering by mistake with a .com when they are at a .ie address, etc. Thus the activation emails bounce back to me even though I have activated your account, so you might not know your account is now usable.
Also sometimes people are worried about spam and put in a fake address -- but this means I get all your emails bounced back to me if yhe system is trying to email you (eg if you get a PM or signed up to be notified about new posts to a thread). The only person who can see your email address is me, unless you check for it to be public on your profile, so no one needs to know it -- but I do! If subscription emails bounce I usually assume they are spammers and delete the account.
So if you are a newbie be sure to sign up with a real email address and make sure the spelling is correct!
Also sometimes people are worried about spam and put in a fake address -- but this means I get all your emails bounced back to me if yhe system is trying to email you (eg if you get a PM or signed up to be notified about new posts to a thread). The only person who can see your email address is me, unless you check for it to be public on your profile, so no one needs to know it -- but I do! If subscription emails bounce I usually assume they are spammers and delete the account.
So if you are a newbie be sure to sign up with a real email address and make sure the spelling is correct!