Knowledgebase
How to enable and disable email verification for new customer accounts in Magento
The settings in Magento are preconfigured in such a way so that when a user creates a new customer account they only have to type their first and last name, they have to provide an email address and a password. By default, the email address is not verified. This means that it might be a real email address belonging to the customer or it can be anything. If you want to be sure that the email account actually exists and belongs to the customer, you can enable email confirmation. This also offers some protection against spam bots.
To enable/disable email confirmation, log in to the admin panel of your Magento and go to System menu>Configuration>Customer Configuration button in the Customers section on the left>Create New Account Options panel on the right>Require Emails Confirmation drop-down menu. Set the drop-down menu to Yes to enable email verification and click on the Save Config button in the top right corner.
Once email confirmation is enabled, when a user creates a new account your Magento will automatically send an email to the email address provided by the customer. The email will contain a link. After the customer clicks on the link they will be allowed to log in to their account and use it.