RE: email verifier
RE: email verifier
- Subject: RE: email verifier
- From: "David Hazel" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 13:57:27 +0100
- Importance: Normal
>An email verifier checks if an email address exists.
>It sends something to a email server without the body, just pings for
>the user.
>If the server reacts with the right code then you know if the email
>adres exists.
The only circumstance when I would consider this approach acceptable is if
I've given my email address to someone who then sends me an email to allow
me to confirm that it was me who gave it to them. But in that case the email
would not be blank; it would contain text informing me of the reason for
sending it. If I were to receive such an email in any other circumstance I
would (a) flag it as spam, and (b) delete it. Since I use anti-spam software
which logs such spam alerts centrally, this would ultimately result in the
sender of the email being marked as a source of spam. Anyone else using the
same anti-spam system as me would then find such messages automatically
treated as spam (and the sender would therefore find that it was pointless
storing email addresses ;-)).
You should not check email addresses in the same way as you would website
URLs, because such emails are intrusive and time-wasting (and could also
potentially look like a denial-of-service attack, if your software goes
wrong). The best you can do is send a confirmation email, as suggested
above, and accept any positive responses as validating your use of that
email address. If, after a given timeout period (say 3 days) you haven't
received a response, that would imply either that the email address was
invalid, or that the user has not given you permission to use it (in which
case you should treat it as not valid). This approach necessitates a delay,
of course, so you would have to find a way of handling this (e.g. give an
email address a status of "confirmation pending" while waiting for the
response or timeout).
>There are a lot for windows but less for mac.
It would be nice if we could keep it that way. Spammers are the only people
who think they are clever; everyone else loathes them.
David Hazel
-----Original Message-----
From: cocoa-dev-bounces+david.hazel=email@hidden
[mailto:cocoa-dev-bounces+david.hazel=email@hidden]On
Behalf Of Rene v Amerongen
Sent: 16 May 2007 12:17
To: Cocoa-Dev
Subject: Re: email verifier
Sorry, I was not clear,
An email verifier checks if an email address exists.
It sends something to a email server without the body, just pings for
the user.
If the server reacts with the right code then you know if the email
adres exists.
There are a lot for windows but less for mac.
Anyway, I need to build this in cocoa.
Thanks
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