I'm looking for a tool to validate email addresses, not just as deliverable but actually valid. To do this the recipient mail server will need to be contacted. I have inherited a large mailing list, and since AOL has taken to rejecting delivery if any one recipient is invalid I don't want to burden the mail system by sending a 100k quarterly newsletter one at a time.
Is there a tool in Fedora?
Note: suggestions for other tools welcome, but I'd like one packaged which I don't have to find, build, and possibly maintain. I can use the socket library from newstools if I must, but I'd rather not roll my own if there's a solution of the "why didn't you just use..." type.
On Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:34:25 -0500 Bill Davidsen davidsen@tmr.com 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.
Chances are that'll somewhat shrink your list and save you a lot more effort as it'll filter the people who forgot about it or whose mail systems are blackholing your mail not bouncing it (which is increasingly common)
Alan
On 4 March 2011 22:41, Alan Cox alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk wrote:
On Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:34:25 -0500 Bill Davidsen davidsen@tmr.com 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.
On 03/04/2011 10:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I'm looking for a tool to validate email addresses, not just as deliverable but actually valid.
if you have thunderbird available, you can use;
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/thunderplunger/
see also;
http://thunderplunger.mozdev.org/
hth.
g wrote:
On 03/04/2011 10:34 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I'm looking for a tool to validate email addresses, not just as deliverable but actually valid.
if you have thunderbird available, you can use;
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/thunderplunger/
see also;
Until I look a bit I don't know if this helps, but it is helpful. If I know an address doesn't work I can send a postcard and ask for an update. If someone pays $75/year to join an organization and asks for the newsletter, I would think they would care if they got it.
On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:36:47 -0500 Bill Davidsen wrote:
Until I look a bit I don't know if this helps, but it is helpful. If I know an address doesn't work I can send a postcard and ask for an update. If someone pays $75/year to join an organization and asks for the newsletter, I would think they would care if they got it.
You might be surprised. We sell subscriptions to a website for between $39 and $99 and people receive their passwords by email after they sign up.
Some people have waited until they get a "your subscription is expiring" notice (also by email, and a year later) to say "I never got my password."
Incidentally, the subscription website isn't what you think it is. It's actually a classified ad service with stuff like used cars and washing machines on it.
On 03/05/2011 03:55 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:36:47 -0500 Bill Davidsen wrote:
Until I look a bit I don't know if this helps, but it is helpful. If I know an address doesn't work I can send a postcard and ask for an update. If someone pays $75/year to join an organization and asks for the newsletter, I would think they would care if they got it.
You might be surprised. We sell subscriptions to a website for between $39 and $99 and people receive their passwords by email after they sign up.
Some people have waited until they get a "your subscription is expiring" notice (also by email, and a year later) to say "I never got my password."
Incidentally, the subscription website isn't what you think it is. It's actually a classified ad service with stuff like used cars and washing machines on it.
Who said I was thinking. Let's kill that ugly rumor right now. ;-)
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 17:34 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I'd rather not roll my own if there's a solution of the "why didn't you just use..." type.
I would probably have gone with: Palm the workload off onto an external list server, that already automatically handles subscriptions and bounces.
In the changeover period, it probably is best to individually contact each subscriber with a resubscribe message to clean up your list. There probably are some people who've just hit the "this message is junk mail," on their original subscription, instead of bothering to unsubscribe. A bit of a braindead thing to do, and problematic if it reports the message externally.
Sendmail is supposed to have validity testing, though I don't know if it can handle your problem (smartly dealing with individual duff addresses in a big list of addresses).
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Alan Cox -
Bill Davidsen -
Frank Cox -
g -
Mark LaPierre -
Sam Sharpe -
Tim