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My favorite is e-mails with three dots in them. Which is actually not a valid address - the RFC specifies that you must have a valid textual character between dots[1]. However, because of poor decisions by Japanese telcoms, a substantial chunk of their users have 'e-mails' associated with their mobile phones with three dots, breaking goddamn every sensible validation script.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.2.4



> Which is actually not a valid address

That means validation was working correctly. The email addresses are invalid even if the server will accept email for them.


There's only one sensible validation script: "Send an email with a confirm link".


Taking action with side-effects on entirely unvalidated user input is usually a pretty bad idea.


Sadly, if you're sending e-mail sanely, your mail provider likely validates recipients, and will be annoyed at you if you send them recipients they think are bogus.


The relevant rfc (on mobile; don't remember which) specifically states that intermediate servers must not validate mailboxes (local parts). And honestly the domain should be "validated" by the server doing an mx lookup; let dns handle it.


So wait, what now? So you can have an email address like first.last@isp..co.jp? Can you give me a generic example?

Yeah, I'm with the other guy, regardless of whether or not it's a good idea to do validation (it's not), that's not an address that should pass validation because it's not a valid domain or hostname.

I could see it being less of a big deal in the mailbox portion given that it's now kinda kosher to ignore dots there.


Yep, for some reason my wife's emails to her sister[1] always bounce unless she uses the desktop, it's madness.

[1] docomo customer with two dots in email




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