[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by Marv

Hi TalkVirginia,

this is long needed mod and I thank you for that one. It does what it should do. But there is a major downside (in particular there are 2) in using it - and yesterday we?ve learned it the hard way, what it is about.

Our ISP forwarded us abuse notices they?d received after installing your mod. As most of the forums out there, since the launch on the edge of this century we have gained a large number of accounts in the database (~30k). In the meanwhile many of them have invalid email-adresses, since the accountholder deleted or changed his emailaccount.

On that basis the mailhosting companies noticed a bounce rate, which has reached the indication level for spam. AFAIR, the common treshhold is at 10%. For that reason hotmail was the first who dropped an abuse report to our ISP, a second one followed by a european hoster forced our ISP to shut down our server immediatly. That?s a responsible behaviour, so we don?t argue with em. They got in contact with us and we were able to explain what happend, deactivated the reminder mod and we were back online.

Your mod, like any other mod referring to email features, shows the lack of checking if a users mailaccount is still existing before sending and a bounce management. Nothing brings you and your forums closer to the spam blacklist, as sending out dozens of emails to not existing mailaccounts and sending these ones periodicly. That?s truly the best way to get your forums mailadresses and IP?s blocked.

What do you think? Could you implement at least a bounce management into this mod here? Something, that deactivates all email functionality for hard or softbounces and brings them to the usergroup for awaiting an email verification/activation? That could avoid a lot of trouble for forums with a userbase +10k.

Hi Marv,

First, let me say that I apologize for the issues the mod has caused. Secondly, I am sure you will be pleased to know I am currently working on a bounced email manager for this mod. Unfortunately, my time to work on development is limited and I will do my best to get something out as soon as my time will allow.

EDIT: Marv, I did a little research on checking to see if an email address exists before sending an email. It looks like most email servers are denying this validation to protect users from spambots. However, the closest that we can get to is at least checking to verify that the domain name is a valid mail server and that "MX" or mail records do exist on that server. I'm currently testing this change locally. If you would like to try this out now as long as you feel comfortable making the change yourself.

1. Open the functions_remindermail.php file that resides in your forums includes folder in your favorite text editor (such as notepad++ or textpad).
2. Scroll down to or about line 100.

Below this line:

PHP Code:


$email = $row['email']; // user email address 


Insert:

PHP Code:


list($junk, $maildomain) = explode('@', $email); 


3. Now.... On or about line 131:

Change:

PHP Code:


if(is_valid_email($toemail))
{ 


To:

PHP Code:


if (checkdnsrr($maildomain, "MX"))
{ 


This should cut down on some of the invalid emails that go out. Let me know how this works for you, or if you have questions.

Thanks