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Understanding the Risks of Email Verification

8min

We're committed to providing accurate and efficient email verification services. When using our service, there are some risks that can arise with the results. These risks can amplify when employing auto-actions with a supported ESP. These risks include:

1. Bounced email addresses that can still receive emails

Our system may mark an email address as bounced. This is because it has bounced in the past and potentially can again in the future. It does not always mean that a bounced email address cannot still receive emails going forward.

2. Non-disposable addresses labeled as disposable

Our system may categorize an email address as disposable, which typically refers to temporary or throwaway addresses. In some instances, non-disposable addresses may be inaccurately flagged. There are protections in place to minimize this from happening.

3. Legitimate addresses marked as spam

While our system is designed to identify spam-related email addresses, there can be cases where legitimate addresses had a bad campaign and got marked as spam, even if these addresses are well-intentioned and follow best practices.

4. Accept_all addresses that deliver

Accept_all addresses are those that look good, but any email address at this domain looks good and cannot be verified completely. These addresses may or may not bounce, depending on the mail server of these domains and how it is configured.

5. Unverified addresses that are fine

There may be instances where an email address is marked as unverified because of various factors including the server took too long to respond, grey listings, and various other technical errors.

6. False positives and false negatives

We have detailed articles about false positives and false negatives to help you understand them better and how they may affect your bounce rate.

It's important to understand these risks with email verification, and mailfloss strives for the highest accuracy. We continuously improve our algorithms to minimize false classifications and our Deep Clean engine is constantly improving. 

7. DNS errors causing misclassification of email addresses

As rare as this error can be, a sudden DNS issue can lead to legitimate email addresses being marked as "illegit" by mistake after our verification process ends. Our team is always working to detect and solve this and other similar kinds of issues in time in case they happen.

Risk mitigation strategies

1. Set your aggressiveness option

Choose and set your preferred aggressiveness option to determine how aggressive mailfloss will perform email verification. For more information about our aggressiveness options, check this article.

2. Whitelist/Blacklist options

Get a better control in terms of what mailfloss cleans and does not clean by adding addresses or domains to your whitelist or blacklist. For more information about this process, check this article.

3. Use the Category Exclusions option

There are some categories that you might not want automatically removed, and that's what category exclusions are for. You can exclude certain categories from those that you want automatically removed, and then you can manually review them and decide what to do with them within our dashboard. For more information about how to set your category exclusions, check this article.

If you have any questions about the mentioned risks or mitigation strategies, our support team is ready to assist you. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.