How Can We Help?
- In this example we will test for the Email address [email protected], replace the gmail Email address with the email address you want to test
- Open the command line/command promt and type in the following command
nslookup -type=mx gmail.com
This command will list the MX records of the gmail domain eg.
Server: 10.0.2.2 Address: 10.0.2.2#53 Non-authoritative answer: gmail.com mail exchanger = 5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. gmail.com mail exchanger = 10 alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. gmail.com mail exchanger = 20 alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. gmail.com mail exchanger = 30 alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. gmail.com mail exchanger = 40 alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Authoritative answers can be found from: alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com internet address = 74.125.39.27 alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com internet address = 74.125.65.27 alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com internet address = 74.125.91.27 alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.225.27 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.227.27
- Select one of the servers listed in the list of MX records and pretend to send a message to that server from your local machine
- Connect to the server via telnet
telnet alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25
- Type in the HELO command
HELO
- Identify yourself using any email address eg. [email protected]
mail from:<[email protected]>
- Type in the email address that you wish to verify
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
- Connect to the server via telnet
- After the last command entered, the server will respond with a message whether the email address exist/is valid or not e.g.
250 2.1.5 OK o15si4900954fal.31 //For success
and
The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. //Failure
