NAME

Mail::Verify - Perl extension for validation of email addresses

SYNOPSIS

use Mail::Verify qw(isfake);

$reason = isfake('bill@microsoft.com');
if ($reason) {
  print "Bad email: $reason\n";
} elsif (defined($reason)) {
  print "Email address perfect\n";
} else {
  print "Could not verify email address: EXPN is turned off at target computer";
}

$reason = isfake('bigboss', 'mail.acme.com');
...

DESCRIPTION

This module checks validity of email addresses. It ensure the existence of a username and domain, unless you specified the MTA, searches the DNS for the MTA (if not specified), and then attempts to use the SMTP keyword EXPN to verify the username. Since EXPN is usually turned off, the module will return undef in such cases, and defined but false if the verification passed. If for any reason the check failed, the module will return a string describing the reason.

CAVEATS

Contemporary ISPs never turn EXPN on, to prevent mail abusers harass more efficiently by molesting only existing addresses with junk mail. Therefore, this is not an excellent solution to check the fill-out forms in your site for users supplying false email addresses. Most addresses associated with valid MTAs will return undef.

AUTHOR

Ariel Brosh, schop@cpan.org.

SEE ALSO

perl(1).