Re: Authentication via libwww?
Randal L. Schwartz (merlyn@teleport.com)
Mon, 19 Feb 1996 06:18:19 -0800
>>>>> "Ramon" == Ramon M Felciano <felciano@camis.stanford.edu> writes:
Ramon> Is there a simple way to authenticate an e-mail address via libwww or a similar
Ramon> package? Ideally, I'd like to be able to send a username and password to a POP
Ramon> (or IMAP) server and have it tell me whether this is a registered user or not.
Ramon> Barring that, I'd at least like to know whether name@host is a valid address.
As is stated *often* on the CGI newsgroup, which you might have found
using Altavista, validating a mail address without user intervention
is an intractable problem. For example, even though the MX for
stonehenge.com points to something you can reach by a port 25 connect,
asking for VRFY on any of those addressess will simply return "yes".
You must actually *send* a piece of mail to find out if it will bounce
or not.
And I am *very* *very* sure that stonehenge.com is not the only domain
like that.
To validate an email address, send a message there with a special
token, and require the user to send it back. If it's a bad address
(or not his/her address), you'll never get the token back.
Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying
Email: <merlyn@stonehenge.com> Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@ora.com)
Web: <A HREF="http://www.teleport.com/~merlyn/">My Home Page!</A>
Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me