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foo@bar.com is a real email address

bar.com

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Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I just came across some potentially real email addresses in the Mailgun docs and sample code, i.e.: http://cl.ly/1L1C0O2A081x000t382z You might want to edit those.

We own profista.com and use it for testing ourselves. Using it in the docs helps us see how many people are trying out the samples. I wish all our users would read the docs as carefully as you do! :)

Would love to read a post about how you measure sample engagement through this and other cleverness!

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#64

I truly feel sorry for the poor guy that owns asdf@asdf.com. I must have registered for over a hundred different accounts on various Interweb forums using his email address...

He mentions that his real email is jklsemicolon@asdf.com. Which is just as funny, and not as prone to cheap viagra offers, presumably.

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#65
post #59
post #17

I thought this is basic knowledge of everyone technically engaged in Internet stuff. But apparently, this isn't the case, despite its well-known and very readable documentation! [1] It says: 1) There are exactly 3 domains the IANA keeps free for that purpose: example.com example.net example.org 2) In addition, all domains under the following 3 top level domains can be used freely for that purpose: *.test *.example *.…

So I've wondered this for a long time. Where does email sent to wildcard@example.com go? If I accidentally sent sensitive information to wildcard@example.com would some evil person (potentially at the IANA) be able to retrieve it someday?

Posted to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8221381/where-does-email-...

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#66

If you really need to receive a test email, you can always use @mailinator.com (just make sure it's not sensitive info). Mailinator is a disposable, publicly viewable email address mostly useful for one-time account registrations, especially in cases where you fear they might spam you. In recent years, I started using the + notation at gmail -- anything you put after the + and before the @ is ignored by gmail, BUT yo…

The "+" trick is great, except for sites that use hair-brained email "validation" scripts which reject the address. Sadly enough, these are often the ones that I most want to use the "+" for (its a great way to also keep track of who hands out your email address to spammers).

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#67
We get a lot of crap email address signups at http://feefighters.com We do a little bit of filtering to check that the email address is legit, but let you get by anyway (with an additional click) if it isn't... we have a 1-click unsubscribe but this is making me rethink whether we should let fake email addresses through at all.

We recently got this email from Fake.com

Hello

We own the domain fake.com, and from time to time some moron out there in the world-wide-waste-of-time uses our name to try and sign up for something...

Not just that, there’s also a whole slew of dozy IT people who test links by doing the same thing without doing a whois check first!

Whichever it is, could you please delete this account?

Thanks [redacted]

fake landscapes - the artificial plant company http://www.fake.com*

Somehow I don't think this has the desired effect... that's a tough domain name for this sort of thing, feel sorry for the guy but not much we can do.

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#68
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fine, off.com doesn't have MX records.

Except some people fall back to the A record (see RFC 5321).

Can you please let me know where you're seeing this? I looked through http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321 for /\sa\s/i and /(fall(\s)?back)/i and didn't find anything related to this this behaviour. I ask because I'd like to have my answer at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8221381/where-does-email-... be as accurate as possible (plus I'm now curious about this).

Thanks!

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#69

That is so true... Most developers who get an account with Mailgun ( http://mailgun.net ) get so excited about the live email log or for some other reason... they love to fire up emails to @test.com. We have thousands of emails in our queue destined for test.com at any given moment. Guys, please stop: what makes you think test.com can't be a real destination? :-) Actually, they don't have a mail server for that domai…

I agree, test.com is an awful domain to use. Whenever I fire up email testing tools, I use president@whitehouse.gov.

do you notice a lot of vans in your parking lot?

Re: foo@bar.com is a real email address

#70
post #16

I frequently use aa@aa.aa - last time I checked, there were no countries using .aa

To you and everyone using things != .+@example.com: why? Example.(com|net|org) were specifically created for this purpose and for the purpose of tutorials. I work in client-facing support, and it's very easy to troubleshoot software that /other people/ write when the client says something along the lines of "It says 'connection to example.com:25 failed'" -- I instantly know what the problem is. If you're using things other than example.(com|net|org) for this, you're possibly making the job of a support tech you'll never meet harder.

If your excuse is "I didn't know about example.com!"...well, that's a lame non-excuse. Do the rest of the IT world a favor and fix your tutorials and software -- mail server administrators like me already have enough headaches from the gazillions of spam techniques in use today.

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