Mail Receive Okay?

[Anon]

Hi, I was wondering if it is at all possible when sending an email via the mail() fucntion to tell whether or not that e-mail address that you sent the mail to exists?

Example:
If i sent an e-mail to "[e-mail]" the chances of someone having that e-mail address is null, would there be any chance of checking the e-mail address exists BEFORE the e-mail is sent, or AFTER it is sent.

Thanks

[Anon]

No.

The best thing you get is a bounce from the remote server, telling you that [e-mail] does not exist. It'll be sent to the user that runs your webserver (i.e. 'nobody').

You can ofcourse automatically process these bounces, only problem being they are not uniform. Depending on the remote mailserver, the contents and structure of the bounced mails differ. You can probably catch 65-80% easily, though 🙂