Checking email addresses

As emails is still the most common way we communicate with our network, it is great having somewhere that an address can be checked before sending something out to a new contact. And there is a website - Clean Talk - where we can load an email address, and the site will check whether the email is viable. 

Sometimes websites make their email contacts hard to find. If faced with a 'contact us' form, most of us won't bother trying. Contact forms are usually set up to be assigned to one person, but due to staff turnover lose the allocation, so end up going to a long-lost and never explored folder. We can avoid the contact form with Clean Talk, instead trying a few email formats to check to see if we can work out a viable email address, and email the organisation directly.

Why else would we want to check an email? Apparently around "30% of email addresses [...] used to spam websites are fake" (Clean Talk, 2025). So the site also checks to see if an email is 'real', or will re-route the email to the actual client email; and will check to see if it has been blacklisted (i.e. it has been reported as a spam email or site). We don't want to email a blacklisted email as that can splash back on us.

I have used this intermittently, without an account, but I would imagine if we were wanting to verify a lot of emails, then having a paid account would be required. 

This is quite a handy site for intermittent use, however!

Sam

References:

Clean Talk. (2025). Email Checker. https://cleantalk.org/email-checker/