On Sep 8, 2010, at 12:22 AM, Dan Dubovik wrote:
If you want to know if a specific email address is available, you can try to send an email to the address, and note the response code after sending it. Using php, you can use the mail() function, however, the error message it returns is binary in nature, either it sends or not, without a real reason why it failed to send.
That tells you if PHP was able to hand the message off to the local MTA (sendmail/postfix/etc). It doesn't give any indication of whether the destination address is valid or not, unfortunately.
Keith: The only sure way I know of to tell if an address is valid or not is to send a 'please reply to this message' email, and see if you get a response or not. And (as mentioned by others) that's not a guarantee that the address you sent to is actually the address which the email was delivered to. Aliases, catch-all accounts, etc can all play a part.
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