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Everyone knows what an email address is, right? (Quiz) (e-mail.wtf)

submitted 21 hours ago by TheBigRoomXXL@leminal.space to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] pyre@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

nice. though valid but obsolete is not a thing... if it's obsolete it's invalid.

[-] codapine@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 hours ago

Also as the registrant of one of those new fancy TLDs, much like the owner of this website (email.wtf), their own email addresses will fail those stupid email validation checks that only believe in example@example.[com|net|org]

Shitty websites will fail "example@email.wtf", guaranteed - despite it being 100% valid AND potentially live.

Source - I have a ".family" domain for my email server. Totally functional, but some shitty websites refuse to believe it.

[-] locuester@lemmy.zip 1 points 40 minutes ago

Yeah I have a .engineering for my biz. I also registered mycompanyengineering.com to get through places that won’t take the new TLDs.

Usually banks.

[-] HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 hours ago

12/21. It was highly entertaining though.

[-] wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 5 hours ago

I scored 14/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

I actually died at the poop emoji one. Actually amazing awareness to test for that

[-] refalo@programming.dev 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Well... like Bill Clinton said, it depends on what the definition of "is" is.

[-] isaaclyman@lemmy.world 19 points 8 hours ago

Let us recite the email validator’s oath:

If it has something before the @, something between the @ and the ., and something after the ., it’s valid enough.

[-] kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago

The ultimate validation is to see if it gets sent.

[-] Turret3857@infosec.pub 7 points 7 hours ago

12/21

are things that are considered out of current spec really "valid" though?

[-] Echolynx@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

And is it really valid if my email provider doesn't accept it? If it's not universally accepted or standard, then it doesn't matter if it's technically valid.

[-] Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 hours ago

The RFC is the standard.

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

If your email provider doesn’t accept email@email.wtf is it then invalid?

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 14 points 8 hours ago

I lost it at the fork bomb. I mean I hit valid because there was no way it was on the and not valid, but there's no way i'd have expected that. after that I just kept guessing the most stupid answer and did pretty well

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 21 points 9 hours ago

I gave up when I got like 5 wrong. I've ran mail servers for decades, most of the invalid "valids" would get rejected by any mailservers I've administered.

[-] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

And for a good reason.

[-] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 hours ago

I scored 18/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

[-] marzhall@lemmy.world 22 points 10 hours ago

I scored 16/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

Damn, and here I thought I had this locked down because I was salty that so many places struggle with + in the email addy. But my god, there's comments?

[-] hodgepodgin@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

15/21

[-] moseschrute@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 hours ago

I scored 13/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

[-] maxwells_daemon@lemmy.world 46 points 13 hours ago

I don't care who the IRS sends, I am not validating emails with spaces on them.

[-] tyler@programming.dev 16 points 13 hours ago

You shouldn’t be validating emails yourself anyway. Use a library or check for only the @ and then send an email confirmation.

[-] who@feddit.org 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Use a library

Please, no. If someone wrote email address "validation" complex enough to warrant a library, then their code is almost certainly wrong.

or check for only the @ and then send an email confirmation.

Yes. Do that.

If your boss demands a more detailed check at input time, then make it display warnings, not errors, and continue to the confirmation sending step if the user chooses to ignore the warning.

[-] zurohki@aussie.zone 9 points 11 hours ago

Even if it's a completely valid address and the domain exists, they still might've fat fingered the username part. Going to extreme lengths to validate email addresses is pointless, you still have to send an email to it anyway.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

I seem to have annoyed an admin of an instance enough for them to subscribe my signup email to hundreds of dating profiles (presumably using a service that offers to harass someone for you)

Many of them aren't good at validating email

One in ten has one email arrive, asking me to click a link to confirm

9 in ten have 5 emails before I notice them:

Please click a link to confirm
You received a wink
You received a wink
You received 3 chat requests
You received a link

So it's important to not send emails beyond the validate one to unvalidated addresses, to perfect your service annoying or harassing this parties

Also, use a disposable address for signing up to Lemmy

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[-] TomasEkeli@programming.dev 28 points 12 hours ago

I don't validate emails, I test them.

That's your email? OK, what did we send it? if we couldn't send to it or the user can't read it there's no reason to accept it.

OK, maybe I do some light validation first, but I don't trust the email address just because it's email-address-shaped.

[-] who@feddit.org 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I don’t validate emails, I test them.

Hooray! You get a gold star.

OK, maybe I do some light validation first,

I hope your "validation" does nothing more than show a warning that the user is allowed to ignore.

I have seen too many systems built by people who think they know what's valid or not before and after the @ sign*, and they are almost always dead wrong. In the worst cases, such systems accept an unusual-looking address and claim to send the expected verification message, but never actually send it. Of course, these systems won't work for some people, and since none of their online docs or support staff know why, those people will be locked out of using the system and funneled into bottomless pit of misery if they try. Please don't build broken garbage like this.

*Fun fact: Not so terribly long ago, even the @ sign didn't have to be present. Some email addresses were bang paths. I'm not sure if any of these are still in use, but it wouldn't shock me to learn that they are.

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[-] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 40 points 13 hours ago

What if we 👉@👈 ..? 🤭

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

Now i just need a registrar that allows emoji...

[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Any should. Any unicode converted to alphabetical anyways, through "xn--" + a punycode conversion. Which is actually fairly important for places that don't use the Latin alphabet.

See http://xn-bdk.gay/, which is the same as http://xn--bdk.gay/

(Someone set this up on 196 a while ago, they said they were using Namecheap)

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

oh jesus, rabbit hole accepted, thanks!

[-] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

Self-host it.

People may find that weird, however.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 58 points 14 hours ago

I don't think it really matters what the standard is, because you'll be completely limited by some 25 year old bit of Regex from Stack Overflow that every web developer ever has implemented into their form sanity checks.

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[-] sexy_peach@feddit.org 9 points 11 hours ago

Average :/

[-] d00ery@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

Me too.

I scored 11/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

[-] dawcas@scribe.disroot.org 17 points 13 hours ago

13 right answers and I didn't expect so many lol

I'll never validate some of the 💩 I've learnt today.

[-] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Validation should just check if it has a @ and send an email and wait for a response... because who knows if mailservers "respect" the spec anyway.

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[-] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 13 points 13 hours ago

Wow. if I ever have the madness required to self-host, I'll have my email at an IP address.

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[-] mp04610@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 hours ago

I scored 16/21 on https://e-mail.wtf/ and all I got was this lousy text to share on social media.

[-] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 55 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Question 5 is incorrect, name@example is a fully valid email address, even after RFC 2822

The spec of RFC 2822 defines an address (3.4.1) as:

local- part "@" domain

domain is defined (3.4.1) as:

domain = dot-atom / domain-literal / obs-domain

dot-atom is defined (3.2.4) as:

dot-atom = [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]
dot-atom-text = 1*atext *("." 1*atext)

1*atext meaning at least 1 alphanumeric character, followed by *("." 1*atext) meaning at least 0 "." 1*atext

If tomorrow, google decided to use its google top-level domain as an email domain, it would be perfectly valid, as could any other company owning top-level domains

Google even owns a gmail TLD so I wouldn't even be surprised if they decided to use it