Verifying an email address exist in C#

c# email smtp email-verification
Kenneth J picture Kenneth J · Jun 15, 2010 · Viewed 20.9k times · Source

Regarding this post about email verification,

using C#, how would you

  1. issue a VRFY command
  2. issue a RCPT command

Answer

Spence picture Spence · Jun 15, 2010

I think you will find that in many instances these functions will intentionally lie to you to defeat spammers. If there were a way to confirm an email is real other than having a user click on a validation (or unsubscribe....) link then spammers would be very happy people.

Just to be clear, the best way to verify an email address is to send a user an email containing a link, and wait for them to click on the link to verify they received the email. Any other technique (with the exception of a corporate/intranet environment) should fail and/or lie to defeat spammers.

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