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Wouldn't this choke if the user's mailbox was full? I understood the default generic answer to this was "send an email to it, through a mailing service you pay

• drinchev 12y ago
  Actually I think the default answer for this is "Send a confirmation link to the email", because you skip almost all the impossible edge cases, like "catch-all address" or using public e-mail address or whatever. Most important question you have to ask yourself is "What do I want?". If the answer is "This user e-mail address.", there isn't better way than sending a confirmation email.
  • vidarh 12y ago
    Absolutely. There simply isn't a reliable lookup method. As I pointed out elsewhere, there are plenty of e-mail systems that won't tell you whether or not the address exists until after you've submitted a valid-looking e-mail anyway.
• manabob 12y ago
  According to http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/tech/smtpreplies.html http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/tech/smtpreplies.html, SMTP server can give you either a temporary error (452 - Requested action not taken: insufficient system storage) or permanent error (552 - Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation). Maybe there are some heuristics that are used for this...?