Freelancer.com: verify users before spamming them

I have a full name that is fairly common in a certain area of the world. On top of that, I was fortunate (?) enough to get the first.last@gmail.com account for my name (back when gmail was still invite-only).

Over time, many people have attempted to sign up my e-mail address for various sites or tried to link my gmail account to another one. Whether these are mistakes or phishing attempts, I always try to take the appropriate action. If the provider supports it, I indicate that I did not sign up for this service, otherwise I ignore or mark as spam. Most services are good about not bothering me if I do not verify the account.

This morning, someone signed my e-mail address up to Freelancer.com. Not only did I get the verification e-mail, I got about 10 other e-mails about the "project" I had posted, which was apparently possible without the account being verified. When I woke up to these e-mails, I emailed Freelancer.com to let them know what had happened and asked them to delete my account. Since then, I have had one e-mail from a Freelancer.com concierge to offer to help me better market my "project".

All of these interactions, with an unverified user. This is of course scary to me because there is a small possibility that my e-mail account was hacked (in order to sign up to freelancer?!), so I'm hoping for a quick resolution. But, in the likely case that Freelancer.com is just treating unverified users no differently than verified one, all I have to ask is: WHY?