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I did several methods to check whether an email address in yahoo is valid or not by using via perl module and also by postfix MTA probing method. In all these methods it tried to sending mails to yahoo only after it says the address is valid or not. Please let me know is there any method to find out the existence of email address in yahoo without sending.

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    If yahoo made it possible to easily check addresses, they would be effectively DOSed by address checks from spammers.
    – Jenny D
    Mar 26, 2014 at 7:57
  • You can't check whether or not an email address exists except by sending an email to that address.
    – joeqwerty
    Mar 26, 2014 at 16:01

1 Answer 1

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The SMTP command you want is VRFY ("VeRiFY that an address exists").
Yahoo doesn't support it. Hotmail doesn't support it. GMail doesn't support it. . . Nobody supports it.

If they did support they'd be effectively giving the world their user list and making life easy for spammers (to say nothing of the volume of checks they'd be getting from those same spammers who could now verify if they have a live target without spending the bandwidth to send the whole message).

What you should do is properly clean your list (make sure it's really opt-in, and use something like Perl's Email::Valid to verify that the addresses are at least correctly formed before you try to send to them). Then remove addresses from it upon receiving a 5xx series bounce ,like a good citizen of the internet.

That's about the best you can do.

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    I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that you are not a filthy, filthy spammer --- please don't make me regret that.
    – voretaq7
    Mar 27, 2014 at 16:05

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