Verify List of E-mail Addresses 1

[FJohn]

How can I verify that the e-mail addresses on a list of addresses are valid with out sending an e-mail to each recipient (and then waiting for the bounce backs)? Is there some way to elicit a response from the the server for an e-mail address indicating whether the address is valid or not?

Thanks,

John

 

[tangodave]

There are two ways that I know of:

1. Use the small utility program called vrfy. It will connect to the mail server of the domain and verify the email address. It has several levels of verbosity. However, some email servers turn off the vrfy function.

2. Do it manually (or figure out a script to wrap around this.). I telnet to the email server on the smtp port (normally 25), and enter the following:
ehlo domain.name
mail from:<youremailaddress@domain.name>
rcpt to:<address_to_be_checked@domain.name>

On each line you should get replies to your commands stating whether or not they were successful or not. Just to check, I always do one recipient that I know does not exist on the system.

Good luck,
--
Dave

 

[tangodave]

BTW you can find the vrfy utility at:

http://filewatcher.org/sec/vrfy