

Reducing bad signup emails with mailcheck.js - andrewberls
http://andrewberls.com/blog/post/13

======
fsckin
I was hoping that this did something a bit more worthy of Hacker News, like
checking if the A Record exists. Or perhaps speaking SMTP to the domain in
question to query if the user actually exists (works on some domains) using
web sockets.

[http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-check-if-an-
email-...](http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-check-if-an-email-
address-exists-without-sending-an-email/)

Maybe I'll build it for fun.

~~~
idle_processor
Why use the A record, rather than MX?

~~~
petercooper
Strictly, you might need to check for _both_. If there are no MX records, mail
will be delivered to the @ A record for a domain (e.g. mail to x@example.com
will go to the IP for 'example.com').

So if there are no MX records, you need to check @'s A record as well (or vice
versa, since not all domains have A records either).

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dko
Thanks for the excellent write up, Andrew. Glad to see that Mailcheck's
working well for you! I'll post up your post on our Github readme in a bit.

As a side note, I'll be releasing version 1.1 shortly, which has a bunch of
improvements, including the option to use keyboard-distance based string
matching. Look out for it!

~~~
asanwal
Why is this better than having users enter their email twice and just
confirming they match?

I realize entering email twice might be slightly sub-optimal from a user
perspective but if you as a user want a service, it seems like entering one's
email twice is not a lot to ask or a major source of friction. Or is it?

Not trolling. Genuine question. We do the type your email address twice on our
site so wanted to understand if there any clear benefits of this approach.

~~~
astrodust
billy@gmail.co

billy@gmail.co

When people don't even know their email address from a URL or a Twitter handle
they're bound to get it wrong exactly the same way.

Plus, confirming an email address is absurd. Why not confirm every other field
on the form if you're such a stickler about accuracy?

~~~
jaredsohn
The e-mail address is more important than other fields both because it can be
used to verify identity and because it allows a website to send marketing
e-mails (which is often the purpose of getting people to sign up.)

~~~
astrodust
My address is particularly important when a package is being shipped, but I
can't recall ever being asked to type it in twice in a row.

~~~
tjoff
Then again, you can do _a lot_ of mistakes when typing your shipping address
and it will still get through. It is also easier to spot mistakes since a
shipping address contain regular words which isn't as common with email
addresses.

One char wrong and your email is completely worthless, and with it your only
real link with the service is cut off - often with no way of fixing it.

------
nikz
The source is at <https://github.com/kicksend/mailcheck> if you want to check
it out.

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TomGullen
Very cool! Far far better than getting people to enter their email address
twice which is a terrible solution to a problem in my opinion.

~~~
akcreek
Can you expand on why you feel double entry is a bad solution? I agree having
to re-enter data isn't preferable, but it seems that a solution like this
isn't perfect either; the user can still enter their address incorrectly quite
easily without it being caught. It seems like double entry would catch more
mistakes than this (not to dismiss this in any way as I really like it).

~~~
ralph
I'd be surprised if many users type it twice. I always copy from the first to
the second and wonder why the form designer has bothered.

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jon6
Random thought: what if you gave users a unique code that they had to email
back to the server to identify themselves.

~~~
shabble
It'd probably be quite a barrier to signup, although I guess a
'mailto:register@example.com?subject=signup-for-$uniqid' link might solve some
of the hassle.

The major issue I can see with it is that many people might like to use a
email alias to signup (I prefer to use shabble+servicename@ for services which
aren't too broken to accept a +) which isn't the same as their configured
sender.

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rbucks
This is awesome. Thanks!

