Is there anyway of checking an email address with the email provider?

[shadiadiph]

Is there anyway of checking an email address with the email provider to see if the username exists?

 

I know how to check if the domain is valid just wondering if there is a way to check the username?

 

 

[revraz]

Send a verification email?

[chmpdog]

there are scripts that check across a database of providers, but these can raise issues. I would recommend a verification email.

[laffin]

There is also something called a return reciept email, once an email has been opened, a confirmation reciept is sent back to the sender.

 

Im not shure how the header for this works, but I know a number of email apps do support it.

 

 

[Psycho]

The options of sending read receipts are customizable in the email client and should not be used for verifying an email. I never send a read receipt when requested just out of habit.

[shadiadiph]

so there is no way to send like a ping to the receiving provider to see if the user is true or false?

[premiso]

so there is no way to send like a ping to the receiving provider to see if the user is true or false?

 

Nope. The only way would be to use IMAP with a cron job to check every x minute(s) to see if a bounce "Mail Delivery Failed" was received and parse that message for their email address.

 

But that in its self can be un-reliable. As it can take longer than a few minutes to receive that notification depending on the mail server(s).

[laffin]

U can log into the smtp server, and send a message

usually the server will tell u if it exists

 

but this has its own complications as well.

as some servers will require authentication

then trying to extract and come up with a legit domain for the service

 

as different providers use different naming systems.

 

Its a lot more immediate than checking imap/pop for a particular message, but it has a lot more complications as well.

 

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Due to the probing attempts by spammers to get mail servers to confirm which email addresses are valid, an increasing number of mail servers are being configured to "silently" accept email that they have no corresponding mail box for. Scripts that open a socket connection to the mail server and start an SMTP exchange to test for an email address can get a false positive indication.

 

The only sure way of determining if an email address is real is to send an email to it with either an activation link in it or an email tracking image in it.

[shadiadiph]

thats what i was going to do I have a tracking script i made a few onths ago problem is I am trying to develop a contact grabber problem I have see is their are heads avaialable on the net but with a server like yahoo and hotmail  not many people store their contacts which returns a valid email address but what most of the grabbers do is just grab the username and stick @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com at the end which isn't very reliable as there is yahoo.co.uk and many other possibilities hotmail is the same gmail and aol are quite safe.

[nadeemshafi9]

yes verfication works, but if ur looking for advanced then you need to set up  abounceback address then log into it after sending it a mail with a shell script and then use imap to read how many bouncebacks you have , use a shell script so u can cron it in order to check every hour because bounces can occur a week later.