51–60 of 86 posts
On the other hand, maybe the specification for email addresses is too loose.
Too loose for what though? To make it more useful as a communication format or to make it easier for developers to validate it? It's hard to believe that a tighter spec could have improved the former.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. You have no way of knowing what all the code along the way between the mail-sending application and your inbox does, that was my whole point.
But how can I be considered to be "asking for it" if I put a dot, hyphen or number in my email address, when millions of email addresses have them; the standard permits them; and many institutional policies create emails with them by default? Which characters can I have in my email address, that won't cause you to tell me it's my own fault when they get rejected? I agree that you have no way of knowing what all the c…
While I agree that some kinds of validation are 'too eager' and annoying, just use a 'legit' e-mail address, ffs. By including super-special characters and whatever extra features GMail or whoever provides, you're just asking for it, sorry. Especially if you're a coder yourself, you can already assume that even if it passes the initial validation, it probably won't be properly stored or escaped when the actual mail i…
The relevant RFCs make it clear what is a correct eMail address. Why should we have to put with lazy or incompetent coders who can't be bothered to meet the standard?
Seriously comments (nested even) in email addresses?
The "+" feature of gmail is great, but I hesitate to use it after some weird validation problems I've had. I've stopped asking that people validate properly, and started hoping that they a) don't validate or b) fail gracefully. One (very important) site properly validated my "+" email address on the front end (gave me no errors), but the backend failed and I never received the required confirmation email... all resul…
I never understood the point of enforcing the spec for user input. Even if done properly it may reject some working, but invalid email addresses. And it does nothing to increase your chances of getting a good email address. Your user is either willing to give you their real address or not. If they are willing, validating fully does not protect against typos and if they are not you will get a well formattd fake addres…
Agree that anything beyond this may be a little overzealous- the real purpose and value of email validation is to help the form-filler discover typos/mistakes, to make sure you reach your willing customer. I can see though how some programmers would be tempted to distort this goal into the goal of having "a clean database." (Although worthy, but not the end goal)
While we're on the topic of emails, does anyone have any anecdotes or data on how often users will click activation links if I log them in after registration? I always hated having to log in to my email after signing up, so I just create an account and login users without any upfront verification. My email to the user says I will disable accounts that are not activated in 4 days, but its just a bluff :)
Or sometimes I get no e-mails at all. When I installed Rapportive (<3!) I found out that "I" had a profile on hi5, which I promptly deleted.
While we're on the topic of emails, does anyone have any anecdotes or data on how often users will click activation links if I log them in after registration? I always hated having to log in to my email after signing up, so I just create an account and login users without any upfront verification. My email to the user says I will disable accounts that are not activated in 4 days, but its just a bluff :)
There are two separate issues going on here. One: validating addresses to catch typos. A common example is typing a comma instead of a dot or typing just a username instead of a whole email address. Flagging these errors is a good thing. Two: some developers believe that they can make people enter real email addresses by being very clever about only accepting strings that look like real email addresses. This is stupi…
Re "Two", if you choose an email address that doesn't look like an email address and it gets blocked then I'm not sure that it is the developer [alone] who is being stupid.
While we're on the topic of emails, does anyone have any anecdotes or data on how often users will click activation links if I log them in after registration? I always hated having to log in to my email after signing up, so I just create an account and login users without any upfront verification. My email to the user says I will disable accounts that are not activated in 4 days, but its just a bluff :)
I sometimes put my email down as foobar@example.com, so I’m definitely not going to click your activation links. That’s probably not representative of most users though.