Email address validation

One thing anyone collecting email addresses anywhere has to think about is address validation. How do you prevent users from typing bad addresses into your forms?
I ran into this yesterday attempting to take an online quiz. Before I was allowed to take the quiz, I had to provide my name, phone number and email address. Initially I attempted to use a tagged email address. This is one that delivers to my wordtothewise.com mailbox, but lets me identify who I initially gave the address to. The form wouldn’t let me give a tagged address “contains invalid characters.” Well, no, it doesn’t, but there are a lot of websites that think + and – and other characters are invalid.
So what did I do? I ended up using a yahoo address associated with my yahoo IM account. An account that may actually not be accepting mail any longer as I rarely log into it.
What did address validation get them in this case? Well, it got them an address I don’t read and may not even be active rather than the address I wanted to give them which would have delivered directly to my primary mail box. Somehow I don’t think this solution is really ideal for them. (It’s great for me, I’ll never know if they ever attempt to contact me.)
Coincidentally, UserGlue posted about email address validation and alternatives to “make them type their address twice.” (Do people do this? I typically cut and paste my address instead of retyping.)
How are other people validating email addresses?

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Privacy policies in court

Venkat has an analysis of a case where an individual provided a unique address to a vendor and that vendor released the address in violation of the posted privacy policy. The federal court rejected the suit due to the failure of the plaintiff to provide evidence of harm.
I posted last week about privacy policies and how often they are intentionally or unintentionally violated and when email addresses leak. Courts have consistently ruled against plaintiffs. It seems that the courts believe merely revealing information, even in contradiction to a posted privacy policy, is not actionable by the plaintiff.
As a consumer, I really don’t like the ruling. If a company is going to post a privacy policy, then they should follow it and if they don’t, I should be able to hold them responsible for their lies. Back in the land of reality, I am not surprised at the rulings. Individuals have never owned their personal information, it is the property of the people who compile and sell data
It does mean, however, that privacy polices are not worth the paper they’re written on.

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What is an email address? (part three)

As promised last week, here are some actual recommendations for handling email addresses.
First some things to check when capturing an email address from a user, or when importing a list. These will exclude some legitimate email addresses, but not any that anyone is likely to actually be using. And they’ll allow in some email addresses that are technically not legal, by erring on the side of simple checks. But they’re an awful lot better than many of the existing email address filters.

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