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On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Tom Rockwell <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Is there a easy and fast way for a user to probe what mail addresses are > available? So far I've used the method of asking the help desk about a > single email address, this was not hard to do, but took a few hours for a > response (which was negative). I see a scaling issue... Define 'easy'. Originally the SMTP protocol had an 'expn' feature; however due to spammers using it to harvest active email addresses it has since been disabled in most environments. -bash-2.05b$ telnet lb.mail.msu.edu 25 Trying 35.9.75.15... Connected to lb.mail.msu.edu (35.9.75.15). Escape character is '^]'. 220 mx06.mail.msu.edu ESMTP Exim 4.63 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:39:48 -0400 expn [log in to unmask] 550 Administrative prohibition ^] telnet> Connection closed. You could of course do something like: antarus@woodpecker ~ $ telnet lb.mail.msu.edu 25 Trying 35.9.75.15... Connected to lb.mail.msu.edu. Escape character is '^]'. 220 mx04.mail.msu.edu ESMTP Exim 4.63 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:42:33 -0400 ehlo smtp.gentoo.org 250-mx04.mail.msu.edu Hello smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183] 250-SIZE 52428800 250-PIPELINING 250 HELP mail from: [log in to unmask] 250 OK rcpt to: [log in to unmask] 250 Accepted ^] telnet> Connection closed. hurrah; it accepted mail; ergo that address is in use. 220 mx00.mail.msu.edu ESMTP Exim 4.63 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:44:35 -0400 ehlo smtp.gentoo.org 250-mx00.mail.msu.edu Hello smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183] 250-SIZE 52428800 250-PIPELINING 250 HELP mail from: [log in to unmask] 250 OK rcpt to: [log in to unmask] 550 5.1.1 unknown user [log in to unmask] and as expected it doesn't accept email for my made up fake address. The RCPT TO is of course not very nice to the msu mail servers as I'm sure they have better things to do like send and receive email; so I would be careful in using it. > > Thanks, > Tom > > John Callaghan wrote: >> >> Gene Willacker wrote: >>> >>> On 5-06-2008 4:39 PM, Matt Kolb wrote: >>>> >>>> Oscar, >>>> >>>> For e-mail purposes your netid is just a pointer to your account. You >>>> can have many pointers to your account. I for example, have three (mk, muk, >>>> and kolbmatt). I can only login with mk, but I get mail to any of those >>>> three. The handles stick around forever until you ask us to remove them. >>>> >>>> ./mk >>> >>> Matt: >>> >>> Is this different from what happens when a staff member has a legal name >>> change and requests that her NetID be changed to reflect that? That is, does >>> the pointer from the old NetID remain active in this case? >>> >>> Thanks, Gene >>> >> >> Regardless of what the reason for the name change, the process is the >> same. The email directories are named and organized by the account's >> UID which is an integer and typically does not change. The old records >> are left in the database, all with the same UID. >> >