On 4 March 2011 22:41, Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:34:25 -0500 > Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >> I'm looking for a tool to validate email addresses, > > > Good luck, lots of big mail systems are designed to make it very hard to > scan for actual user names (spammers like that) so you are more likely to > end up blacklisted than get answers. > > Perhaps instead of sending a 100K quarterly newsletter you need to send a > short 'list cleaning, you must click to continue receiving under new > ownership' mail ? and set up a web page for it. I have to agree with Alan (I work in the hosting industry.) Any attempt to "check" those email addresses is likely to be interpreted by the recipient server as something with malicious intent. Moreso for the larger ISP/Mail providers, as you are going to be checking thousands of addresses - which I would interpret as a brute-force attempt if I saw it in a log. In the long term, you are better off sending the list-cleaning email and then creating a double-opt-in strategy for any further signups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt_in_e-mail) Most large ISPs will accept that if you have a double-opt-in strategy and you prove that you take reasonable efforts to ensure that people can unsubscribe, you are acting in good faith and should escape or appeal any blacklisting. You should also investigate whether *your* sending ISP will allow you to sign up for automated feedback loop emails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback_loop_%28email%29) which will allow you to take action by removing people who flag your mails as spam in their mail client. Yahoo and Hotmail both have one of these. Typically this means that your ISP is prepared to certify to Hotmail/Yahoo that you have "exclusive sending rights" from the IP of your mailserver. It's not something you can do in a shared-hosting environment. You can also increase your deliverability by implementing SPF and DomainKeys/DKIM as it's just another item on the list of evidence for you acting like a legitimate mail sender rather than an unscrupulous spammer and will generally be viewed positively by reputable mail providers. -- Sam -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
