How To Verify If An E-mail Address Exists

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 9, 2012
Updated • Jan 9, 2012
Software, Windows, Windows software
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Sometimes you may want to make sure that an e-mail address exists before you start sending out messages to that address. While you could simply send a test message to the address and see if it bounces off the mail server, you'd may want to try a sneakier solution so that the recipient does not know about it. It should be clear that the recipient will receive the test message if the e-mail address exist.

Before we look at a tool that allows you to verify e-mail addresses, we should for a moment look at reasons for verifying addresses. A common reason is a mailing list that you want to clean up, another if you can only remember part of the e-mail address and not all of it.

EToolz is a free portable program for the Windows operating system that can verify if e-mail addresses exist. While it does not work for all messages, it works fine for many including Google E-Mail addresses (Gmail that is), and not for others like Microsoft's Hotmail.

Switch to the Mail-Check tab of the program once you have started it. Here you need to key in the e-mail address you want to test, and optionally sender and server information as well as a timeout for the connection.

verify email address

Click the start button once you have entered and modified all parameters to your liking. The program will then try to establish a connection with the selected e-mail address which may or may not work. Gmail will for instance let you know if sender and recipient are accepted. Even better, you will sometimes get information why it is not accepted, for instance if the email account is over quota like in the example on the screenshot above.

Not being able to test multiple e-mail addresses at once is one of the downsides of the program. You can download it from the developer website. Please note that the initial interface language is set to German. Click on Extras > Sprache / Language to change it to English or another of the supported languages.

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Comments

  1. Urdu Shayari said on January 7, 2013 at 1:16 pm
    Reply

    Thank God for Mailwasher!

  2. Rahul Gupta said on February 21, 2012 at 4:04 pm
    Reply

    this is an awesome article i can use to identify wether someone use either real email or fake email, but, this is only one of some methods to scrutinize the real email. anyway,, if we activate the telnet service in our machine (windows system),, there are some security issues we have to patch. otherwise, our privacy will be in danger and easily to be hacked. i hope the author insert some links about telnet security issues. cheers!

  3. who said on January 10, 2012 at 7:37 pm
    Reply

    how can attach a file
    can bee…

  4. Paul said on January 10, 2012 at 6:18 pm
    Reply

    Thank God for Mailwasher!

  5. Frank said on January 10, 2012 at 5:16 pm
    Reply

    The need to restrict email checking is not nearly restricted to spammers. I myself have a client list that I send bulk emails to. If I get any failures I like to check and see why. I have my own script written that does this for me.

    Knowing if an email address exists is basic information that should be passed along freely. There is no personal information passed. Just a simple yes or no if it exists or not.

    There should, however, be a limit to the number of multiple emails you’re checking. If you’re trying to verify 1000+ emails, yeah there’s likely something fishy going on there, bu that’s not written in stone either.

  6. Nicolai said on January 10, 2012 at 2:10 pm
    Reply

    To test about a mail exist or not, anyone can also just go to the “New account” page and use the “Is this mail available?”-button.

    So plus 1 to gmail (for not making this task harder).

    Spammers isn’t stupid, so if they want to tast a few mails, then they just program their own program (so whether or not the developer add “batch email check”-support will not helt the spammers).
    The mail host (Google/MS/etc) will keep track of who checks mails, so you can’t really abuse it.

  7. akn said on January 10, 2012 at 1:38 pm
    Reply

    Hooah!! Nice

  8. Roebie said on January 10, 2012 at 12:38 am
    Reply

    A decently configured mail server should not expose such information.
    +1 for hotmail and -1 for gmail.

  9. Morely the IT Guy said on January 9, 2012 at 11:15 pm
    Reply

    The “need” to check multiple email addresses is almost completely restricted to spammers. Everyone else is perfectly capable of calling their friends and asking, “Hey, what’s your email address?”

    I applaud the developer for *NOT* allowing multiple checks in a batch.

    1. Leslie said on January 10, 2012 at 4:06 pm
      Reply

      I disagree, there are legitimate reasons for wanting to validate an email address in the business world – especially in the Financial Services Industry. Just because you think everyone is criminally minded does not mean that they are.

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