Real email address

Bluenose

New Email
Hello

Is it possible please, to determine the validity of a company email address without sending a message to that email?

There is an email address as in Bob@myCompany.com but is it possible to determine that Bob@myCompany.com is a real address without sending a message to that email?

Thank you.

Blue
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
HI Bluenose,

"Maybe" is the best answer. The technical test you can do is called a manual smtp conversation. You can quit after seeing if the MX server for a domain seems like it is going to accept an email address.

For example, here are some steps to lookup the MX for a domain and check with the mail server without actually sending an email to the address:

Code:
> dig +short emailquestions.com mx
0 smtp.secureserver.net.
10 mailstore1.secureserver.net.

Code:
> telnet smtp.secureserver.net. 25
Trying 68.178.213.37...
Connected to smtp.secureserver.net..
Escape character is '^]'.
220 p3plibsmtp02-11.prod.phx3.secureserver.net bizsmtp ESMTP server ready
helo example.com
250 p3plibsmtp02-11.prod.phx3.secureserver.net hello [52.202.217.244], pleased to meet you
mail from:<anonymous@example.com>
250 2.1.0 <anonymous@example.com> sender ok
rcpt to:<bob@mycompany.com>
550 5.1.1 <bob@mycompany.com> Recipient not found.  <http://x.co/irbounce>
quit
221 2.0.0 p3plibsmtp02-11.prod.phx3.secureserver.net bizsmtp closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

In that example the error "Recipient not found" was returned because the MX for this domain EmailQuestions.com doesn't host or think that bob@mycompany.com is valid (and also because I was not authenticated for smtp relay)

There are also a lot of results that provide a web based version of this check if you do a Google search for "test if email address valid"

Also, try doing a Google search for the email address and you might find it listed on the company web site or some other web site where it was used.
 
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