mailw.com is not mail.com or gmail.com

[ghost]

I own the domain mailw.com and when I enter the domain it asks if I am sure it is not mail.com.

This is not useful when you start questioning real domains. It makes the user think they are using a mail service which is not popular enough. If this is going to happen. You are doing FREE advertising for other mail services.

The w is on the opposite side of the keyboard so the user is not likely to misspell the domain anyway. I would look for typos of possibly maill.com or mail,com or maik.com maybe but even then how can you check spelling of domains when domains are misspelled anyway. All you can check is for incorrectly formatted emails.

[chriscct7]

This is not useful when you start questioning real domains.

Most misspellings of popular mail services are registered as domains. The entire premise of this project is to make a way to easily detect a misspelling of a popular mail service (one that has sizable marketshare).

The one thing that could be done is see if the key is located near a common misspelling as suggested, but even that I'm not so sure about. On a mobile keyboard, the w key is located right next to the "a" key, so its plausible that as the thumb that taps a lifts upwards, perhaps to click on a UI element, the w key could be brushed unintentionally.

[ghost]

The project is also promoting popular mail services at the expense of
smaller mail services. Why not just verify that the domain they entered
actually is a mail server?

On 11/13/13, 1:19 PM, Chris Christoff wrote:

This is not useful when you start questioning real domains.

Most misspellings of popular mail services are registered as domains.
The entire premise of this project is to make a way to easily detect a
misspelling of a popular mail service (one that has sizable marketshare).

The one thing that could be done is see if the key is located near a
common misspelling as suggested, but even that I'm not so sure about.
On a mobile keyboard, the w key is located right next to the "a" key,
so its plausible that as the thumb that taps a lifts upwards, perhaps
to click on a UI element, the w key could be brushed unintentionally.

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[ghost]

Actually, if the email address is formatted correctly and there is an MX
record for the domain, then you should leave it alone assuming the
account exists. That's all you need to do is check for an MX record. No
MX record means the email will fail so then it makes sense to suggest.

Gregg

On 11/13/13, 1:19 PM, Chris Christoff wrote:

This is not useful when you start questioning real domains.

Most misspellings of popular mail services are registered as domains.
The entire premise of this project is to make a way to easily detect a
misspelling of a popular mail service (one that has sizable marketshare).

The one thing that could be done is see if the key is located near a
common misspelling as suggested, but even that I'm not so sure about.
On a mobile keyboard, the w key is located right next to the "a" key,
so its plausible that as the thumb that taps a lifts upwards, perhaps
to click on a UI element, the w key could be brushed unintentionally.

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#63 (comment).

Gregg

[chriscct7]

I fail to see how it's promotion. The project is aimed at correcting misspellings of popular mail services. So yes it's going to recommend that the misspelling is a popular mail service.

Checking MX records is simply impractical programming wise. Doing a checkdnsrr on a persons email is really bad idea. If the MX record doesn't exist, the query takes forever to process, and opens an easy way for someone to DDOS a site. Not worth the risk.

[ghost]

Because it's not a misspelling. The user did nothing wrong by typing
@mailw.com.

Look at it this way:

Imagine if there was a spelling/typo check on a website URL. The user
types kicksend.com but before he presses Enter it asks did you mean
kicksen.net only because (hypothetically) kicksen.net is used by a
billion people and kicksend.com is unknown.

Also, an MX check is easy to do and the results of validated domain
names could be stored in an SQLite table to reduce MX requests.

I have actually had to retype my email address after another JQuery
email checker renamed mailw.com to mail.com automatically. I am at the
point where I will just write a new email checker and put it up against
the others.

Gregg

On 11/13/13, 1:37 PM, Chris Christoff wrote:

I fail to see how it's promotion. The project is aimed at correcting
misspellings of popular mail services. So yes it's going to recommend
that the misspelling is a popular mail service.

Checking MX records is simply impractical programming wise. Doing a
checkdnsrr on a persons email is really bad idea. If the MX record
doesn't exist, the query takes forever to process, and opens an easy
way for someone to DDOS a site. Not worth the risk.

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#63 (comment).

Gregg

[michaelbinks]

@Vynx I have to say i disagree with your assumptions. It is after all just a friendly reminder.

We use this on one of our sites and have had a huge decrease in the number of users signing up with a mistyped email address. I fail to see how a few simple words, 'did you mean ...', become an advertising slogan for other email services.

We have updated the list of domains with those we find most popular in our user table and with the most popular bad addresses we see. You could do the same and include mailw.com

However your mx check idea does sound interesting. Why not fork the repository and build a simple prototype for us to see?

[ghost]

Really simple prototype of PHP Code used to check MX (no error message
or use of MX cache which could be added):

function ValidEmailAddress($email)
{
if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
if
(preg_match('/^(([\w.-+!#$&'+=?^`{|}~])+@((([a-z\d-])+.)+([a-z\d]{2,4})+|localhost)
*,? *)+$/i', $email, $aMatch)) {
*getmxrr($aMatch[3], $hosts);
return count($hosts) > 0;
}
}
return false;
}

The bold are built-in PHP functions. The localhost check would be dropped.

Gregg

On 11/13/13, 3:49 PM, michaelbinks wrote:

@Vynx https://github.com/vynx I have to say i disagree with your
assumptions. It is after all just a friendly reminder.

We use this on one of our sites and have had a huge decrease in the
number of users signing up with a mistyped email address. I fail to
see how a few simple words, 'did you mean ...', become an advertising
slogan for other email services.

We have updated the list of domains with those we find most popular in
our user table and with the most popular bad addresses we see. You
could do the same and include mailw.com

However your mx check idea does sound interesting. Why not fork the
repository and build a simple prototype for us to see?

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Gregg

[chriscct7]

getmxrr is a function that PHP's authors wrote in the documentation: "this function should not be used for the purposes of address verification. " Further, it wasn't available on PHP prior to 5.3 (and alot of hosts still run 5.2.17 or similar).

But the largest problem is that nearly every domain registered nowadays will pass that check given the MX records are set up by the host (which doesn't mean they are actually used, or a mail service).

A better example that does what you're attempting to do is http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.getmxrr.php#64117

However, for sites running mailcheck doing that ^ will result in a performance hit.

I'm with Michael. Mailcheck is intended to be a reminder/correction system for the 95% of users that use the top 20 or whatever email service providers. Not something designed to find every single small email host that ever existed.

[ghost]

Thanks for taking the time. I realize it is not a problem for most
people. It's just getting to the point where more and more sites are
asking if I am sure I typed my email address, don't you want gmail.com
or mail.com? Maybe I'll just change my email address. My customers who
use mailw.com have not said anything yet.

You know moveon.org is using a mail checker on their petitions. They
say: "/Did you mean ggreen@gmail.com"/ it seems that developers are
choosing this over retyping the email address. I can't control it. I
mean it's asking a question that I can't even answer no to. I put in
ggreen@maps.com and it says: /Did you mean ggreen@mac.com/? It's just
irritating. Why would I get @maps.com confused with @mac.com? This is
from moveon.org. Not sure if they are using yours. It's just an example.
I'm providing user feedback at this point.

I have a philosophy that relates to this. It is not to design systems
that do too much "detection" but instead try to be more straightforward
in my approach to development. In this case, I would tend to lean more
toward making the font bigger and very clear so people realize when they
make a typo. Do some field masking so they couldn't even enter a space
or comma.

Thanks for all your attention. I'll leave you alone now.

Gregg

On 11/13/13, 5:07 PM, Chris Christoff wrote:

getmxrr is a function that PHP's authors wrote in the documentation:
"this function should not be used for the purposes of address
verification. " Further, it wasn't available on PHP prior to 5.3 (and
alot of hosts still run 5.2.17 or similar).

But the largest problem is that nearly every domain registered
nowadays will pass that check given the MX records are set up by the
host (which doesn't mean they are actually used, or a mail service).

A better example that does what you're attempting to do is
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.getmxrr.php#64117

However, for sites running mailcheck doing that ^ will result in a
performance hit.

I'm with Michael. Mailcheck is intended to be a reminder/correction
system for the 95% of users that use the top 20 or whatever email
service providers. Not something designed to find every single small
email host that ever existed.

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#63 (comment).

Gregg