Re: tlug: Real email addresses

[Jim Tittsler <jwt-tlug@example.com>]

On Mon, May 17, 1999 at 05:28:43PM +0000, Darren Cook wrote:
> Is there a good way to check if an email address is valid? We want to send
> thank-you emails out when someone applies from a web form, but ideally we
> don't want the invalid address emails coming back to a human. We want them
> quietly written to a log file where they can be dealt with in batches.

Send them with a sender/from address that is aliased to or filtered to a log
file or script.

> Ideally we want to know if the persons address exists before we send the
> email. Is this possible? Are there programs/scripts to do this?

In the old days, you *sometimes* could use SMTP's VRFY command to find out if
the remote host thought it was a valid address.  But there are too many
mail configurations where that is not possible/practical and there are too
many privacy concerns for that to be useful nowadays.  Send the mail, handle
the bounces.

-- 
Jim Tittsler, Tokyo   ICQ: 5981586

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