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Right now my site is sending auto-generated emails with verification link to visitors that register on my website upon registration.

Because I am on a shared hosting, all those emails end up in a gmail's spam folder.

Is there any other method to verify user's email address besides automatically sending them a verification link?

This is not "How to make sure email is not marked as spam" type of question. I'm looking for alternative to sending emails for email verification (if there is any).

Menel
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  • Possible duplicate of [How do you make sure email you send programmatically is not automatically marked as spam?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/371/how-do-you-make-sure-email-you-send-programmatically-is-not-automatically-marked) – FirstOne Jul 15 '16 at 13:14
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    implement mobile number verification by SMS – Yogesh Jul 15 '16 at 15:08

2 Answers2

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If you need to use email addresses as user-ids, there is no alternative.

  • SMTP still allows VRFY and EXPN commands, but few servers accept them, and they're not reliable even then.

  • If the user has an email certificate, you can ask her to sign something, so that you know she has the private key, and then accept the certified email address, but who has personal certificates nowadays?

  • If you can claim a symbolic payment using Paypal, you're gonna get payers email address as a bonus, but can you afford to lose non-Paypal users?

  • Of course, you can use OpenId, but do you still need an email address once the user is validated?

A related question is Why do you want to use email addresses if you cannot send email messages? A possibility is to mark a user as email-not-verified until a message can be sent properly, from a reputable domain, at a later time.

Ale
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  • I need users to verify email address to reduce the number of multiple accounts per user. They also may use email address to change their password or reset it when they forget. Don't know of any better way to do that. Thanks for the great answer. – Menel Jul 15 '16 at 18:11
  • @Ale This is an interesting idea: _using Paypal, you're gonna get payers email address as a bonus…_ Do you have any thoughts on the ethics of doing this? – Parapluie Oct 23 '19 at 18:32
  • @Parapluie It is ethically disturbing, but *identity*, as a concept, is strongly related to payment. I pay, therefore I exist. They even invented the concept of legal entity in order to confer an identity to tax payers. – Ale Oct 24 '19 at 07:24
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Another way would be to use code verification(shortcode) which can be sent to their phone(like the way Google) does it. Note that it is just an optional way of verification.

wanjiku
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  • Is that free or I would have to pay a service to send those sms messages? – Menel Jul 15 '16 at 18:16
  • SMS cost is low. Unanswered phone calls is possibly even lower. Mail.ru calls you on the cell phone hanging up as soon as you reply. On the PC, it then asks what were the last digits of the caller number. – Ale Oct 24 '19 at 07:29