Sending a VRFY Command

Under normal circumstances there is no reason to issue a VRFY command as part of an SMTP dialogue. The SMTP RCPT TO command should perform the same function that VRFY does and return an appropriate error. However, servers exist that can accept any address in a RCPT TO (and bounce it later), whereas these same servers perform more extensive checking as part of a VRFY command.

By default, the MTA does not send a VRFY command (the novrfy keyword is enabled).

If necessary, the MTA can be configured to issue the SMTP VRFY command by including the domainvrfy or localvrfy keyword in the channel definition. The keyword domainvrfy causes a VRFY command to be issued with a full address (user@host) as its argument. The localvrfy keyword causes the MTA to issue a VRFY command with just the local part of the address (user).