How to check if an email address is fake ?

Question

I need to know how check if email address is valid without using link in email confirmation. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can't, end of story.

Even using email confirmation only proves that the email address was valid at that time. It could then be shut down a second later!

Same for any other Internet based ID systems like OpenID, they can be set up and shut down just for the duration of the registration process. Even credit card ID can be one off since the invention of the disposable "debit" credit card.

Only government ID systems are likely to be valid for any length of time. There are major security implications when collecting and validating government ID's though, and it is different for each country.

It would be easier if all the governments could work together on one common system with a shared validation system including biometrics. Then Mossad couldn't steal passports so easily! They should set up a global community to organise it, maybe they could call it the UN? It shouldn't take long to sort out :-)

Answer 2

You can't. There's a reason everyone does it like that. But you could use OpenID instead.

Answer 3

There's no way to know if an email address is fake.

But you can:

• Check if the address domain exists
• Send an email to the address with a confirmation key to be returned

Answer 4

You can't make sure if an email id is fake or real, but you can check if the mail has come from an original server or not.

For example: if the mail id is xyz@google.com then it should come from google server, but if it comes from some other server then it has a high probability of being fake. You can check the original code of email, in gmail,hotmail show original option shows full code,and in yahoo you can see the code in option show header.

Answer 5

You can try by coding an application that simply do a reverse lookup for domain, once ok send a test email and check for the right reply codes. There is also a verify VRFY command in last SMTP protocol specs RFC-5321, check here http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-3.5.2