How is e-mail verification done? A Step-by-step Guide

Introduction

We enforce sender e-mail verification on our relay server. In short it means the sender should be an existing e-mailaddress. The long version is that under some circumstances even an existing e-mail address could fail the verification.

Let’s say in our example mail is sent from [email protected] and we want to check the existence of the address [email protected].

Prerequisites

• A relayserver
• Existing e-mailaccount

Step 1: Verify the server

Lookup MX records of ws1.snel.com, if found, use that server to verify, else use the IP address of the server sending the e-mail to verify

Step 2: Verify with the following sequence

Verify with the following sequence:

$ telnet ws1.snel.com 25
Trying 2a00:7b80:3043:1000::34...
Connected to ws1.snel.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ws1.snel.com ESMTP Exim 4.84_2 Fri, 12 Jan 2018 12:54:33 +0100
HELO ns3.snel.com
250 ws1.snel.com Hello aaa [bbb]
MAIL From: [email protected]
250 OK
RCPT To: [email protected]
250 Accepted

Replace ws1.snel.com with the hostname of the MX record from the sender domain and replace [email protected] with the sender address you want to verify. Don’t replace ns3.snel.com or [email protected].

Step 3: Check if the e-mail exist

If mail to the sender address is accepted we know that the e-mail address exist.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you have now verified the sender.

Known issues

• Sender verification on Microsoft 365 platform is not allowed. Please use O365 SMTP server when sending mail with O365 addresses.
• When an external forward is setup on some control-panels sender verification could fail. Check with above steps. Use another e-mailaddress as sender.
• If the IP address you are connecting from is listed on a blacklist the mail could be rejected and the verification could fail. Make sure that you test from a location which is not listed on a blacklist. Use an online tool to verify that your IP address is not listed on a blacklist.