How to Spot a Faker: Verifying Real vs. Fake Email Addresses

Today there are millions of scams and hoaxes that reach peoples computer via email. Oftentimes they use legitimate sounding email addresses to get you to open the email scam being sent. Some are cunning enough to bypass regular spam features. Verifying if those email addresses are real or fake can save you a lot of headaches from spam attacks and potential risks. Aside from receiving anonymous mail, you may want to check email addresses people give you before you get involved in any business with them, this also protects you from being a victim of scams. Here are a few simple tips to separate the real ones from the fakers.

Test the Email using Free Web Mail

Set up a free email that you can use for testing purposes, you can use Yahoo or Gmail. Write a new message and send it to the email address you are trying to verify. Write “testing” or some other word like “hello” in the subject line as well as the message box and then click send. Wait for a few minutes and refresh your email. If the address is from a fake email, you should be receiving an undeliverable mail notification.

Check the BBB Registry

The BBB or Better Business Bureau keeps a list of all accredited businesses and charities in the US and Canada. You simply need to type the email and the domain of the company and you will see the results if it is a valid company as well as customer feedback regarding the services.

Online Email Verification

Use online email validation services to verify if the address is legit or not. Email validation tools connect to the mail server and checks if a particular mailbox really exists. Verification services do this in 3 steps.

This is done through a series of tests, first the email verification checks for the syntax or proper format of the email address, making sure there’s an @ sign and a (.) period.
Then the DNS or domain name server is checked by looking at mail exchanger records to validate if the domain exists. For example the email address is anything@mytechteam.net, DNS testing will make sure that mytechteam.net really exists.
The last component to be checked is the SMTP validation where, the username itself is verified. In our example it will check if the “anything” username and mailbox is within mytechteam.net.

There are many email verification sites that offer free and premium services. They are quite easy to use, you simply need to type the email address in question and it will return the results, usually a ping back with an IP address that looks like a series of numbers. It will tell you if the email address is OK or REJECTED if it’s fake.

You can use http://www.email-unlimited.com/ or http://www.emailfinder.com/, these sites also have a premium service but you can use the free online feature as well. Another useful site is http://hexillion.com, this site offers email verification, domain verification and other premium services and products that you can download.

If you are a bit on the techy side, you can do your own fake email investigation by doing a server ping by using telnet on Windows, verifying MX records and SMTP on your CMD prompt.

ABOUT MY TECH TEAM:
My Tech Team is a leading online tech support company based in the U.S, providing nationwide on demand enterprise level computer support and protection 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.