🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37D21508.6828@cygnus.uwa.edu>, mixeman <lavida@cygnus.uwa.edu>
wrote:

>> As to the poster's original question, if the ISP has disabled fingerd, the
>> only thing you can do to verify an email address is to telnet to port 25
>> on his machine and use
>>    VRFY joe@yourhost.net
>> or
>>    EXPN joe@yourhost.net
>> or go through the motions of sending a test message
>>    HELO myhost.net
>>    MAIL FROM: me@myhost.net
>>    RCPT TO: joe@yourhost.net
>>    QUIT
>> 
>> I am sure the ISP did not *intend* for you to have to diddle with his SMTP
>> daemon in order to verify an email address, but that is *exactly* what he
>> achieved by disabling fingerd.
>> 
>> Pity.
>> 
>
>I found another program that does SMTP verify.
>However, almost every ISP that doesn't support finger has also disabled
>the EXPN command in their mail server.

Even if both EXPN and VRFY are disabled (I agree EXPN should be disabled;
I don't think VRFY should be), you can always do the HELO-MAIL-RCPT-QUIT
thing. This establishes that the user exists, but doesn't generate a mail
message (since you never said DATA).

There's no way to disable *that* without breaking SMTP (which is why only
a bozo would disable VRFY).

JD

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