Re: [TOOT]: Dyslectics untie!

[Alex Farber]

Tobias Hoellrich wrote:
 For one of our web services we ask people for a valid email-address to
 access the service. Once the address passes an initial RFC822 check we send
 a message to the user which contains an activation link. Once the user
 receives the message and clicks on the link we consider the email address
 valid and he/she can use the service.

Maybe this will be useful: http://public.yahoo.com/~jfriedl/regex/code.html
and Email::Find from http://athens.arena-i.com/~schwern/src/

/Alex

[TOOT]: Dyslectics untie!

[Tobias Hoellrich]

For one of our web services we ask people for a valid email-address to
access the service. Once the address passes an initial RFC822 check we send
a message to the user which contains an activation link. Once the user
receives the message and clicks on the link we consider the email address
valid and he/she can use the service. 
I'm simply blown away by the number of bounced/wrong/undelivered emails I
receive every morning. It looks like close to 50% of all emails get
returned to us for one or the other reason. Is it really possible that so
many people don't know their email-address, cannot type, have buggy
mail-gateways, etc. ?
I would really like to hear if other people have similar experiences and
knowing that this is a question with very high OT-factor feel free to send
responses to me directly rather than the mod_perl list. 

Thanks
  Tobias 

PS: TOOT = totally off-off topic

Re: [TOOT]: Dyslectics untie!

[Kee Hinckley]

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At 8:39 AM -0700 5/12/00, Tobias Hoellrich wrote:
I'm simply blown away by the number of bounced/wrong/undelivered emails I
receive every morning. It looks like close to 50% of all emails get
returned to us for one or the other reason. Is it really possible that so
many people don't know their email-address, cannot type, have buggy
mail-gateways, etc. ?

First of all.  Do you make it clear that they won't receive 
authorization until they receive the mail?  Secondly, do they get any 
access at all if they give you a fake email address?

It's not at all surprising to me, but that's because I'm on the 
receiving side of a lot of those registration bounces.  People very 
commonly use fake domain names, and somewhere.com is one of the real 
popular ones.

What amazes me is the number of sites that send email to "users" and 
don't check for bounces.  So over and over I get subscription 
notices, advertisements and other junk addressed to (usually) 
non-existent email addresses at somewhere.com.  I bounce more than 
100,000 messages a month.

This is true of even some of the so-called "opt-in" mail services 
like yesmail.com.  I got around 1000 email messages from them last 
week, all addressed to bogus somewhere.com addresses.  In their case, 
that means they're defrauding their advertisers.  But they didn't 
respond to my complaints.
- -- 

Kee Hinckley - Somewhere Consulting Group - Cyberspace Architects(rm)

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.

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