The Forgotten Art of Email Address Verification
page 1 of 5
Published: 11 Dec 2003
Unedited - Community Contributed
Abstract
Several VBScript techniques to prevent bad Email addresses from getting into your database.
by Joshua Finer
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Introduction

As webmasters and database administrators struggle to keep email address databases clean, web site form validation becomes key. At this point, the state of email address validation is poor. Feel free to prove it to yourself: go to your favorite site that requires registration, and enter “dlkjfdklj@djflkjdlkj.com” as your email address. More often than not, it will let you through no problem. Keep in mind that not only is it letting you through, but it is also storing that email address in an internal database. These email databases get littered with bad addresses, which companies usually handle in one of two ways:

  • Ignore the problem and send membership emails anyway. This results in many bounced emails that waste bandwidth both to (when sent) and from (when returned) the Internet.
  • Hire temps to painstakingly pick out individual bad email addresses. This is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Additionally, this is a reactive, not proactive, solution.

What you should be thinking at this point is “Why not stop the bad email address before it gets into your database?” As you might guess, there are different approaches to validating email addresses on web site forms. Generally, there is an inverse relationship between ease of implementation and quality of validation. However, with the recent popularity of developer components, these types of solutions can typically be “snapped in” with little learning curve.

    The following is an overview of the various levels of email address validation.

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User Comments

Title: Finding, Verifying and Correcting Bad Format email addresses   
Name: GeakeIT
Date: 2010-11-22 6:55:59 AM
Comment:
I wrote a script a while ago that finds bad formats and human errors, then corrects them too.

Basically it cross references domains that have email opens recorded against them and corrects several human errors. So homail(missing character)/htomail(swapped character)/jotmail(close proximity keyboard button) are all corrected.

Details are too long to write here really so have a look at this link...

http://www.geakeit.co.uk/2010/07/30/the-ultimate-database-email-address-validatingprocessingcorrecting-script/
Title: Owsem.....   
Name: chanchal
Date: 2009-10-14 5:29:21 AM
Comment:
This article could be more easier if ther is snippet.But isnt mean its bad its fine .
Rocks.........
Title: Great & Help Full   
Name: Atul Khandelwal
Date: 2007-03-28 3:09:57 AM
Comment:
This is surely a good article but you could have atleast explained the last header width a snippet
this articla is really good and help full
Title: great   
Name: Manmeet
Date: 2006-08-04 7:40:50 PM
Comment:
The article is really very good
Title: Good   
Name: Gaurav
Date: 2006-06-10 2:36:39 AM
Comment:
This is surely a good article but you could have atleast explained the last header width a snippet
Title: thanks for the info!!   
Name: BH
Date: 2006-05-07 11:00:55 AM
Comment:
thanks!

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