The account is set to be semi-active until the email address has been verified. This is done by opening a link in the email in a web browser.

I did not get the verification email in the account, and decided to investigate the matter after 10 minutes of waiting. Google mentions that it can take a few minutes to receive the email, but ten minutes was all that I wanted to wait.

Google lists the username and Google account email address on the last account sign up page. It is a good idea to verify that the email address is correct so that you can be sure the verification email was send to the right email address.

But how can you get Google to resend the verification email to your account?

Google offers two suggestions to users who did not receive the verification email:

• They ask the users to check their spam and bulk mail folders to make sure that the verification email was not filtered out as spam. That’s the first thing that you should do. If the first email landed there and you did not check, you can be pretty sure that the second email will be flagged as spam as well.
• Request a new verification email. If you have made sure that the email is correct, and that the verification email has not been flagged as spam, you may want to ask Google to resend the email to your email address.

Users can get a new Google verification email by signing in to their new account. Remember, the account is semi-active, which means that it is possible to sign in and out among other things. When you sign in to the Google Accounts homepage you will see an “Account verification needed” message there, with an option to resend the verification email.

Just click on the link there to resend the email. You can repeat the process multiple times, which may sometimes be necessary if your email provider is experiencing technical difficulties.

In short: If you have not received the email with the verification link sign in to your Google account to resend it.

Three checks can be performed to verify email addresses without actually sending emails to the recipients. These are syntax, domain and server level checks Syntax is probably the easiest to understand. If the format of an email address is invalid it will throw a syntax error. It’s easy to sort these invalid emails out even before connecting to the Internet.

Domain and server level checks require a connection to the Internet. They basically check if the domain name is valid and if a mail server is available to process incoming email messages.

The email verification software Realva Email Verifier can import email addresses in various ways. It supports pasting multiple email addresses in its interface but can also load a list of email addresses from a file.

It is then possible to verify all available email addresses by selecting one or all of the email verification checks. The software uses multiple threads which speeds up the process noticeably.

Another interesting aspect is that the email verification software will test the email addresses using a HTTP web server that is using a different port than 25. Port 25 is often blocked by organization, businesses or ISPs to block spam.

The verified email addresses can be sorted in various ways before they can be saved in formats such as txt, Excel, Word or csv.

The settings contain options that include changing the number of connections, using specific DNS servers or creating rules that mark emails as valid or invalid.

Realva Email Verifier is a sophisticated program for users who check email address lists regularly. It is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems.

Update: The email verification software is no longer available. The developer website returns a 404 not found error. The link has been removed as a consequence.

It usually does not make much sense to hide the images for some contacts of the user like family members, business partners or friends. That’s why Google decided to change the way images are handled in Gmail slightly.

Gmail will now display images automatically if the account owner has send an email to the sender at least twice in the past. It should also be noted that the images will only be displayed if the email is send from an authenticated server such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Mail.

Every other email with images will be handled just like before. This new behavior can be changed in the Gmail settings so that images in emails are handled for all contacts like before. To do that click on the Settings link in the top right corner and locate the External content option in the General tab.

The default option should be “Always display external content (such as images) sent by trusted senders”. To revert to the old way simply select “Ask before displaying external content” instead and click on the Save Changes button to save the new setting.