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How about rejecting all email addresses that contain the character sequence "jex"? 99.9999% of email addresses with "jex" in it are invalid, so it makes sense t

How about rejecting all email addresses that contain the character sequence "jex"? 99.9999% of email addresses with "jex" in it are invalid, so it makes sense to reject it, doesn't it?

pixl97 10y ago
If a few hundred people messed up and typed jex instead of sex a day, then yes it would make sense to reject it.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  1. That wasn't the argument. 2. No, it still wouldn't make sense to reject existing email addresses if there is a method to figure out whether the email address you are being presented with actually exists instead of divining validity using some unreliable proxy. There is just absolutely no reason to ever reject an email address that you can successfully send emails to.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I mean, in this case there are two reasons. They're both bad reasons, but still. 1. "Our email provider won't send to them". That excuses OP's part in the thing, although now we need to ask why the email provider is being stupid. 2. "We don't do validation links, they cause too many lost users". I have serious problems with this, but from a pure-business standpoint they decided that rejecting valid emails loses fewer users than using account confirmation. Number two is vaguely horrifying to me, but in terms of "new users gained" it probably works out.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
      > 1. "Our email provider won't send to them". That excuses OP's part in the thing, although now we need to ask why the email provider is being stupid. Nope, actually, it doesn't. If your reaction to noticing that some service that you are using is incompetent is to adopt the same incompetence, that doesn't excuse anything. > 2. "We don't do validation links, they cause too many lost users". I have serious problems with this, but from a pure-business standpoint they decided that rejecting valid emails loses fewer users than using account confirmation. > Number two is vaguely horrifying to me, but in terms of "new users gained" it probably works out. Well, sure, it's as much a reason as "I don't like your nose!" If they don't do verification emails, they might as well just not ask for an email address in the first place (or make it optional). Misguided "validation" doesn't help with most mistyped addresses anyhow.
      - Bartweiss 10y ago
        I oversold 'excuses'. Let's say "means the original error lies elsewhere". I also wonder who the hell they're using - who ever heard of an email service that bans domains for being likely misspellings? The "it's as much a reason" I disagree with. Validating common typos will catch more errors than false positives, so you do get more users through your funnel than if you abandon it. "I don't like your nose" is a strict loss, this causes corrections to get real emails. So they'll still miss most typos, but it's a net gain compared to not doing it. Of course, again, I don't endorse any of this. Decide if you're ok with bad emails, follow through on that decision, use verification, and get a not-incompetent email service.
    - nicolas_t 10y ago
      Are they being stupid though? For example, hotnail.com is a parked domain. There's virtually no chance that a user actually has an email address there and sending an email to a wrong email address is bad for the email provider reputation... I mean it's not like they block a huge amount of domain names but with their volumes, it makes sense to avoid sending emails that will never be received by their intended recipients anyway... Could it inconvenience legitimate users? Yeah, there's a probably of that but it's negligible and so far we've never had a complaint about it... On the other hand, we've had users telling us that it was good that our system caught their typo.
      - Bartweiss 10y ago
        This is a fair point. I guess it's the sort of thing that I'd prefer to see fixed with a double-check prompt instead of a rejection, but I doubt it's causing many problems. I was primarily thinking of short domains like "gmail" and "aol". For those, I can see a company called, say, "Gail" getting blocked from legitimately using "Gail.com". "Hotnail" seems a lot less risky. Not a big problem, I just have an aesthetic objection to very high-friction things like blocking possibly-legal domains. As a double-check option I wouldn't object, and in fairness it's possible no one has ever been inconvenienced.

How about rejecting all email addresses that contain the character sequence "jex"? 99.9999% of email addresses with "jex" in it are invalid, so it makes sense to reject it, doesn't it?

pixl97 10y ago

If a few hundred people messed up and typed jex instead of sex a day, then yes it would make sense to reject it.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
1. That wasn't the argument. 2. No, it still wouldn't make sense to reject existing email addresses if there is a method to figure out whether the email address you are being presented with actually exists instead of divining validity using some unreliable proxy. There is just absolutely no reason to ever reject an email address that you can successfully send emails to.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I mean, in this case there are two reasons. They're both bad reasons, but still. 1. "Our email provider won't send to them". That excuses OP's part in the thing, although now we need to ask why the email provider is being stupid. 2. "We don't do validation links, they cause too many lost users". I have serious problems with this, but from a pure-business standpoint they decided that rejecting valid emails loses fewer users than using account confirmation. Number two is vaguely horrifying to me, but in terms of "new users gained" it probably works out.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
    > 1. "Our email provider won't send to them". That excuses OP's part in the thing, although now we need to ask why the email provider is being stupid. Nope, actually, it doesn't. If your reaction to noticing that some service that you are using is incompetent is to adopt the same incompetence, that doesn't excuse anything. > 2. "We don't do validation links, they cause too many lost users". I have serious problems with this, but from a pure-business standpoint they decided that rejecting valid emails loses fewer users than using account confirmation. > Number two is vaguely horrifying to me, but in terms of "new users gained" it probably works out. Well, sure, it's as much a reason as "I don't like your nose!" If they don't do verification emails, they might as well just not ask for an email address in the first place (or make it optional). Misguided "validation" doesn't help with most mistyped addresses anyhow.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      I oversold 'excuses'. Let's say "means the original error lies elsewhere". I also wonder who the hell they're using - who ever heard of an email service that bans domains for being likely misspellings? The "it's as much a reason" I disagree with. Validating common typos will catch more errors than false positives, so you do get more users through your funnel than if you abandon it. "I don't like your nose" is a strict loss, this causes corrections to get real emails. So they'll still miss most typos, but it's a net gain compared to not doing it. Of course, again, I don't endorse any of this. Decide if you're ok with bad emails, follow through on that decision, use verification, and get a not-incompetent email service.
  - nicolas_t 10y ago
    Are they being stupid though? For example, hotnail.com is a parked domain. There's virtually no chance that a user actually has an email address there and sending an email to a wrong email address is bad for the email provider reputation... I mean it's not like they block a huge amount of domain names but with their volumes, it makes sense to avoid sending emails that will never be received by their intended recipients anyway... Could it inconvenience legitimate users? Yeah, there's a probably of that but it's negligible and so far we've never had a complaint about it... On the other hand, we've had users telling us that it was good that our system caught their typo.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      This is a fair point. I guess it's the sort of thing that I'd prefer to see fixed with a double-check prompt instead of a rejection, but I doubt it's causing many problems. I was primarily thinking of short domains like "gmail" and "aol". For those, I can see a company called, say, "Gail" getting blocked from legitimately using "Gail.com". "Hotnail" seems a lot less risky. Not a big problem, I just have an aesthetic objection to very high-friction things like blocking possibly-legal domains. As a double-check option I wouldn't object, and in fairness it's possible no one has ever been inconvenienced.