Leadership By Numbers :: Helping Users Verify an E-mail Address

Category Administration
At my organization, I'm guessing that at least several times a week, a client is frustrated that their mail is not being received. I've never had a mail system suddenly refuse to route outbound mail for a specific user. What is almost always the culprit, is a failed address. A one (1) instead of an L (l), or the account no longer exists, and now the e-mail fails. Of course, in a trusting, happy Internet world, the failure would be acknowledged. But, because so much spam is scatter-shooting addresses in all directions, it's necessary to silently delete these address mistakes.

Now, I can take the time to trace down the address in question, and show it is faulty. Or, I can point the client to Verify-Email.org.

http://verify-email.org/ has a simple interface that can assist the end-user or the Help Desk personnel in substantiating the validity of the address. I've tested in on Postini fronted accounts, Yahoo, and several private mail servers. Everything works so well that I think I might actually be looking forward to the next client complaint concerning their failed Internet e-mail.

Comments

5 - Hm, I haven't heard any rumors of selling the mailing lists. That said, (1) spammers are filtered by their content and their source IP, I'm not as concerned for protecting my address anymore than having an unlisted phone number (I know that's not a perfect metaphor, but it's my leaning). (2) If privacy is an issue, I mystified why so many people sign up for "free" mail accounts on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Of course the contents are being harvested, sliced and diced for advertisting.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 10:04:30 PM On 01/15/2008 | - Website - |

4 - While I like the idea, isn't there some concern this organization is recording every successfully verified address and selling it on a list?

I know they say they don't record email addresses, but they do sell bulk email tools...!

Posted by Richard Thomsen At 09:20:57 PM On 01/15/2008 | - Website - |

2 - Vitor - - you are so right. There are a lot of mail servers that won't accept the query. However, most of the ones that I tested, worked as expected.

Of course, there is also the possibility that the email address works, but it's not the right person.

Someday, we'll have trusted authentication and we can all sit around and laugh about how goofy e-mail used to be.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 02:33:22 AM On 10/25/2007 | - Website - |

1 - It is a nice tool, the problem is most email servers will not verify and will accept the email even the user doesn't exist. Just try using your own name at us.ibm.com

Posted by Vitor Pereira At 05:56:45 PM On 10/24/2007 | - Website - |