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icon5.gif   Invalid addresses block email notifications, posted by Dimitrios Tsirigkas on Mon Sep 25 15:30:48 2006 
    icon2.gif   Re: Invalid addresses block email notifications, posted by Stefan Ritt on Mon Sep 25 18:23:54 2006 
Message ID: 1958     Entry time: Mon Sep 25 18:23:54 2006     In reply to: 1957
Icon: Reply  Author: Stefan Ritt  Author Email: stefan.ritt@psi.ch 
Category: Question  OS: Linux  ELOG Version: 2.6.1 
Subject: Re: Invalid addresses block email notifications 

Dimitrios Tsirigkas wrote:
Hi Stefan,

We have had problems with some users who subscribe for elog notifications using fake email addresses. When this happens, e-mail notifications stop working for all users and I have to find out which is the problematic email address and fix it myself. Is this a known problem? Is there a fix in a version newer than 2.6.1?

Thanks,
Dimitris


Hi Dimitris,

in fact I have the same problem here with the forum. So far I did not find a clever solution, but I have some thought on how to minimize it:

  • Do the self registration by sending a key to the registered email address. Only by using that key the account can be activated. This way at least on ensures a proper email address initially. There are however ways to temporaryly generate email accounts, which kind of bypasses this system. Furthermore, if an email address becomes invalid because the domain is switched off, this does not help.
  • Email at least an error notification to the admin in case of failure.

You would say "why not removing the invalid email address"? Well that's kind of hard, since I send the email notification to all recipients in one email. Therefor I cannot figure out which is the offending email address. If I would send the emails separately to everyone, this can easily take minutes, which in turn would block the email server for that time. A solution would be a multithreaded server, which in fact is planned, but will not come so soon. If you come up with another clever solution please let me know.
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