Re: GLUG: OT. Email addresses

[Andrew McGill <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, someone (possibly Tom Cooper) said:

> Does anybody know of a way to verify that an email address exists?
1. On older SMTP hosts,

telnet mail.acme.co.za 25 
HELO there
VRFY user@xxxxxxxxxx

or
telnet mail.acme.co.za 25
HELO there
MAIL from me@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
RCPT TO user@xxxxxxxxxx
-->invalid or OK... if invalid, it is a negative check...

2. Syntax check (if it looks like an e-mail address, it might be).

3. Phone the person and ask "is your address user@xxxxxxxxxx?"  (This
works best if their address is actually user@xxxxxxxxxx -- if it is
something else, this suggestion may require some revision...)

4. Send a test message to the person, like "Hi! I heard that you died last
week -- is this true?"  Note that an answer in the affirmative is not a
positive indiciation of death.

5. Send a "special offer" spam to all the 500 000 people on your list, and
see how quickly your ISP kills your account.

&:-)

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Features are later known as bugs.