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I am trying to figure out a way to check if an email address exists without sending out an email. Anyone did something like this before in ColdFusion?

Geo
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    [mailboxlayer.com](https://mailboxlayer.com/) offers a REST API for validating email addresses. – ale Jul 21 '16 at 13:18
  • Did you search the archives first? There is nothing built into CF, but there are possible options such as [online mail verification services OR issuing low level commands to the mail server via telnet, etcetera](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565504/how-to-check-if-an-email-address-exists-without-sending-an-email). None of them are 100%, but are as good as it gets AFAIK. – Leigh Jul 21 '16 at 13:19
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    We use the Java isEmail class from http://isemail.info/ (no longer available). It performs a cached background MX check to determine if the mail domain is valid, but I don't think there's any way to verify whether it truly exists. Many mail servers will accept incoming bad email w/o revealing existence, process it and then bounce or delete it to protect against directory harvest attacks (DHA). – James Moberg Jul 21 '16 at 13:21
  • @AlE. Thanks!!! It works great! – Geo Jul 21 '16 at 15:47
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    One possible solution that may be easier to implement is to just make users verify their email address first. Then only send emails with a verified address. – Caleb Palmquist Jul 21 '16 at 18:21

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