Invald Email Address

[+Learned Gerbil]

A friend of mine has made her first find and would like to log it. However, she has access to only one email account, and her employer dictates the form her address takes which is "firstname"."lastname"@domain. Her last name is not English and includes a non-alphabetic ASCII character. According to the relevant SMTP RFCs it is a valid character when used in the local part of the address and has never caused her problems before. Is it therefore possible for the account creation system to be tweaked to accept valid addresses? She has no other internet access and her employer does not permit using third party email accounts on their systems such as gmail etc. She therefore has no way of creating an account despite having a valid email address.

[+sbell111]

Bummer. She should consider a.) getting internet access at home, b.) going to the library or any other public internet access point, or c.) popping over to your house.

 

EDITed a.) for clarity.

Edited April 27, 2006 by sbell111

[+Polar B's]

You might have her send you an email from that account and then look at the source code for the email. Somewhere in there it might reveil another form af the email address that you can use. Test it by sending here an email. I have seen this happen before and was able to find a alternate version of the email address.

[+Learned Gerbil]

a and b shoudn't be necessary, and c would probably prompt some sort of domestic crisis!

[+Optrex]

You might have her send you an email from that account and then look at the source code for the email. Somewhere in there it might reveil another form af the email address that you can use. Test it by sending here an email. I have seen this happen before and was able to find a alternate version of the email address.

 

I agree with this. Her work email will be an alias using first.surname@domain and is probaly linked to an id like user12345@exhcange.domain

[+Learned Gerbil]

I have tried that and all the relevant addresses use the same form for the local part. All contain Ascii character 39 which appears to be the problem as it is the only remotely unconventional thing about her address. Character 39 is perfectly legitimate in the local part of an address, and it is an address she can't change and has never proved a problem before.

 

There are over 100,000 people on that network and the rules for forming addresses are understandably rigid. She is new to caching, so the idea she should go out of her way to find another way of registering (like buying a home computer) when the sport should be welcoming her with open arms doesn't run. As it is she will not be logging a find and will be lost to the hobby due to sloppy validation in the registering system.

[wandat24]

Is it when she sets it up and they try to verify it, when it says it's invalid? I am guessing that's what it is... Many bussinesses have a way of setting it up where certain e-mails are rejected to help reduce sam on the networks so that they won't get bogged down as much. Is she allowed to get forwards of any kind? I would bet most she can't, but few she can. At first I was thinking it was the "." in her e-mail but mine has it. "wandat.jerryt" It works without any problems at all. However it wasn't my original e-mail addy... you might consider helping her out by setting up a "fake" e-mail addy for her, having her use it to register (can't remember if you have to validate the account in the e-mail account or not, but surely you can help with that as well). Then once her account is set up she can go into her account information and try changing it in there to her e-mail addy at work....... Then again I also am wondering if it's a letter of her last name causing it.... If so, I can't think of anything to help get around it, short of contacting someone in charge of the website and seeing if they can help out by allowing it.

Other then this, I can't think of any other way she could do it without going somewhere to use a public or a friend's computer.

[+Stunod]

Can you set up a gmail (or similar free account) for her and have all mail automatically forward to her work account?

[+Team Red Oak]

Would her employer agree that a and b weren't necessary? Many employers don't want their employees accessing non-work related internet sites while on the job (it doesn't meant people don't do it).

 

I bet it's the character in her name that is causing the problem.

[+Polar B's]

If you google "EMAIL ADDRESSES WITH APOSTROPHES" you find that they cause problems with some mail servers. So my suggestion would be to send an email to Groundspeak and see if they can do anything.