XF 2.1 How to check in advance, whether email addresses are still valid?

[snoopy5]

Hi,

I am planning to make in the near future an import from a very old software with a backup from 2012 probably first into an empty XF2.1 and then in a XF live forum

The problem is because of GDPR & risk of getting blacklisted the very old user database from 2012. There will be probably many users, which email addresses are not valid anymore. Of course I do not want to send a nomal mass email to them, because this will harm the reputation of my URL and server ip.

Is there a way to send out of that empty XF installation a mass email to a website, which cheks these email addresses, to get "unofficial" bounces so that they are marked in XF then automatically as "invalid" and do not harm my Server IP reputation?

Or any other solutions for this?

 

[webbouk]

I would suspect that the majority of the email addresses are no longer used if they date back to 2012

 

[snoopy5]

Yes, I do think so too. But the content of the forum is still worth it.

So this is why I want to check those emails before I import it later into my life forum.

I need to send thise emails also out of the ACP of the text-Xenfor installation, because only then I have the automatic switch in the userprofile to "bounced emails". I do not want to dothis thousand times manually

Is there no website out there which has a solution for this?

 

[djbaxter]

If you are sending out newsletters or email notifications, invalid emails will bounce.

If a member did not opt in to email notifications or a newsletter, then whether the email is valid or invalid really doesn't matter.

 

[snoopy5]

If you are sending out newsletters or email notifications, invalid emails will bounce.

If a member did not opt in to email notifications or a newsletter, then whether the email is valid or invalid really doesn't matter.

They did opt-in, but 11 years ago. So it is less a problem with GDPR because of optin, but because of invalid email addresses.

 

[djbaxter]

If you set up Xenforo's email bounce correctly, that will solve your problem.

However, having said that, I must admit still haven't figured out how to set that up correctly. I keep thinking when I get time I'll take a day and go through the manual and see if I can get it working.

 

[snoopy5]

To setup XF correctly is not a problem. The problem is, that if you send out thousends of emails with invalid email addresses from your domainname, your server IP and your domainname will be immediately on all blacklists listed. And it is very hard to get removed.

 

[Paul B]

Use a third party app to send out a newsletter - failed deliveries and bounces will be recorded as part of the stats.

Then you can update the accounts in XF manually to set the status to invalid email, etc.

 

[Mr Lucky]

You could try this, they do a free trial

NeverBounce: Verify & Clean Bulk Email Lists

Over 125,000 users trust NeverBounce for their real-time email verification and advanced email list cleaning & scrubbing services.

neverbounce.com

alternatively you could open a mail chimp account see if mail chimp have a service that can test your list

 

[Mr Lucky]

Just had a quick look and I think by default mail chimp do a test on any lists that are imported. If a certain amount fail they reject the list. I do not know if they communicate the actual failures to you though it could be while importing they get to a point that x% fail and they stop the import.

I have found their support to be good so could be worth asking.

 

[snoopy5]

You could try this, they do a free trial

NeverBounce: Verify & Clean Bulk Email Lists

Over 125,000 users trust NeverBounce for their real-time email verification and advanced email list cleaning & scrubbing services.

neverbounce.com

alternatively you could open a mail chimp account see if mail chimp have a service that can test your list

This is what I was looking for. How reliable are they?

This is my result:



If I can trust their checking, this seems to be a lot better than I would have imagined/expected. With 6% I probably could risk it to send it out with the normal Xenforo mass mail system after the import, since all other addresses in that forum are 100% clean.

Or do you find 6% to high?

 

[snoopy5]

After deleting it, they showed me more details

 

[snoopy5]

Just had a quick look and I think by default mail chimp do a test on any lists that are imported. If a certain amount fail they reject the list. I do not know if they communicate the actual failures to you though it could be while importing they get to a point that x% fail and they stop the import.

I have found their support to be good so could be worth asking.

I just opened a free account with mailchimp and uploaded the email addresses to test this. No alerts. But I do not find anywhere the hint, that the email addresses are checked during the import.

My guess is that they only get checked if I try to send a newsletter to them.

 

[Mr Lucky]

How reliable are they?

I don't know.

I just opened a free account with mailchimp and uploaded the email addresses to test this. No alerts. But I do not find anywhere the hint, that the email addresses are checked during the import.

Perhaps they aren't then it was just a thought I had they might do it.

But I found this, so they check them when they fists send a campaign. And halt the send if the percentage is too high.

So this seems like a safe way to protect your (and their) reputation.

Why We Verify Imported Contacts | Mailchimp

Learn about Mailchimp's audience verification process.

mailchimp.com

 

[snoopy5]

I found another email verifier:

https://www.emaillistverify.com/pricing

They are really cheap. 4 USD for 1000 Email addresse and 15 USF for 5000 addresses. So this is worth it because they really check also the "unknown" email addresses compared to the free option from neverbounce.com.

I also read somewhere on the net, that you can have up to 1000 emails checked for free, if you only check each day 100 for 10 days.

So this seems the best offer as long as you do not want to have the automatic interaction with Xenforo to change the userstatus automatically to "invalid" afterwards.