completed question on new joinup emails

Quick question-
I had a new member apply and get approved by me, but I see in my email logs that no notifications got to her, even the one to let her know her membership was approved. The reason given was that no such user was listed in that email provider's customers. I deleted her profile since she'd not be getting any communication from the site without a working email.

My question is: doesn't an applicant's email address get automatically checked for validity when someone becomes a member of the site? I always thought they did.
Otherwise anyone could join with a fake or non-functional email address.
I know my Kickbox module checks through member email addresses in a systematic way, but I always thought a new member couldn't join without at least starting out with a valid email address in the signup process...not so?

Thanks!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 10/17/16 10:49:49PM

If I joined your site and signed up with michael@fotmd.com the mail looks like a valid one, I don't have access to it, but it would probably pass the validity checks.

if i tried to join with the email address michael@is@cool.net that would fail the checks because its not in the correct email format.

The default method, without the pending system, is to send an email to the addressed used with a link to confirm they can access it.

With the pending system working, I believe the admin gets the chance to say "NO" before that email gets sent out. If the admin says "YES" then the "welcome" message should go.

Yes i understand what you are saying about the email 'looking like' it's valid because it's in a valid email format.
But what I'm saying is: a person tries to sign up as a member using (for example) Judyblue23@msn.com ....but she doesn't have an msn email account.

Does the current Jamroom 'validity check' check to see if the email is actually functional when a person signs up (whether it needs admin approval or not), or is it simply checking to see if the address 'looks like' a typical email address format? (i.e. not something like Judyblue23@msn@com )

If not, I would think it would be extremely desirable to have an email validity check in place for signups, to prevent people from joining your site using fake email addresses.
I do have the kickbox email validation set to actually check 100 member email addresses each day for free which is great at catching long expired/defunct members, but validating the email address as functional BEFORE the member can join would go a long way in preventing spammers or people with grudges or bad intentions from actually joining in the first place. Any thoughts on this? thanks!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

By default the core just does a valid syntax check for the email (which should be fine 99% of the time). If you have the Kickbox module installed, then make sure the "Signup Check Enabled" option is checked in the global config, and that will attempt to "sort of" validate an email address.

Unfortunately there is no reliable way to ensure an email address is VALID (i.e. exists in the target system) just by having the address - the only sure fire way is to SEND an email to that address and have the user respond to something in the email (i.e. validation).

If you think about it, if it were easy to validate that an email address was an actual functional email address, it would be a heyday for spammers.

Let me know if that helps.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Ok, I'm understanding your points, thanks. I mistakenly always assumed that a signup couldn't even go through if the email address was fake. Good to know now!

Brian- one last clarification please:
When you say
"If you have the Kickbox module installed, then make sure the "Signup Check Enabled" option is checked in the global config, and that will attempt to "sort of" validate an email address. "

...I do have that checked, but... what does 'sort of' mean? How does Kickbox 'check' whether an address is deliverable? And when an address is deemed 'undeliverable' by Kickbox, is that evaluation pretty reliable?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Kickbox does some extra things to try and determine if it feels the address is good:

- has it seen emails sent to this address before?
- is the domain a valid domain?
- does the domain have valid MX (mail exchanger) records?
- how long has the domain been registered for?

etc.. it then basically gives a "score" to the email address to determine if it thinks it is good.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

That helps then. Thanks Brian and Micheal! I'll mark this thread concluded then.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015