Yeah I know what you mean I also tend to only use plugins that are well known. But I am currently using the one I mentioned and so far I’ve had no problems and have been able to clean up accounts that don’t activate after a few days.
Try using. A plugin named “Buddypress Pending Activations” it lets you check for accounts that have not yet activated their account, resend activation keys, manually activate accounts, and even delete inactivated accounts in bulk.
Kinda Piggybacking off the iPhone Uploads having a “Upload from Url” might work well as an alternative that way it can be worked around to still allow phones to upload images.