How to Use Ping to Verify an Email Address

So how can you check if the email lists on your database is valid or invalid? One way to verify an email address is by sending out a mail to those email lists, if the message did not bounce back, then it is safe to presume that the address is a valid one.

However, there are web domains wherein they have designed a catch-all email address; this means that any email messages addressed to a not existing email address will never be delivered back to the sender. Nevertheless in most all cases, such email messages will certainly bounce back.

Another way to verify an email address is by pinging. This works when you send out email to a specific person, the message your message proceeds to an SMTP server which will then search for the MX (Mail Exchange) information of the email recipient’s domain.

If for example, you send an email message to hello@gmail.com, the mail server will attempt to locate the MX records for the gmail.com domain. If the information is found and exists, the following step would be to evaluate if that email username (“hello” in the example) exists or not.

You may also verify an email address without sending a message. Here are the steps:

  1. Let’s say we use stevejobs@gmail.com. Now, use telnet in Windows or the PuTTy tool. If you a Mac user, then open the iTerm app.
  2. Now, type this command prompt:

“nslookup  –type=mx gmail.com”

With this NSLookup command will test name servers for that domain. As we have stipulated the type as MX, our command will draw out and list the MX records of that email domain. Now, change gmail.com with the domain of the email address that you’re attempting to validate.

3. Pick and choose any one of the servers that is listed in the MX records, probably select the one with the lowest preference level number and try to send out an email message to that server using your computer.
With this, head to the command prompt window and type in the following commands in proper sequence stated below:

telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25

HELO

mail from:<labnol@labnol.org>

rcpt to:<billgates@gmail.com>

After sending out the last command prompt, the server will then respond “OK” if the address actually exists or 550 errors if it’s not.

Example:

abc@gmail.com – The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

support@gmail.com – The email account that you tried to reach is disabled.

Then that is the end on how you may make use of pinging when trying to determine if the email address actually exists.

Contact us to learn more.