Story
Don't verify email addresses by sending spam to them
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Overview
Validating email addresses by sending spam is ineffective and not recommended. A Pangram sign-up form uses a POST request to verify emails, but sending spam for validation contradicts established best practices.
Summary from milek7.pl.
Reports
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Community reactions
Each reaction summarizes sampled comments from the linked discussion.
Hacker News · milek7.pl
Hacker News discussion ↗
Historical count: 5 · 5 saved in sample · Historical sample
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Based on 5 sampled comments from this thread. Analyzed 2026-06-24.
- Praise: Using a one-time code for email verification enhances security and reduces the risk of spam, aligning with best practices for user data protection.
- Praise: Mailgun's validation API offers comprehensive data, which can improve the accuracy of email verification processes and reduce false positives.
- Concern: The potential for third-party APIs to misuse email validation techniques raises significant ethical concerns about user privacy and data security.
- Concern: The suspicion that email validation services might leak addresses to spammers undermines trust in these tools and could lead to increased spam for users.