EarthLink is a Legacy US ISP mailbox. Across 65,636 EarthLink addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 10.7% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 86.9% unknown and 1.0% confirmed valid. Unknown dominates because the gateway defers probes.
Every EarthLink address BounceZero verified for customers between April and October 2026, beside the corpus benchmarks. The remainder of each row to 100% is risky and role results.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EarthLink | 65,636 | 10.7% | 0.0% | 86.9% | 1.0% |
| All non-freemail domains (business and ISP) | 6,514,884 | 14.5% | 2.3% | 27.0% | 32.6% |
| Business domains only (consumer ISP and freemail excluded) | 1,269,919 | 22.9% | 9.4% | 22.5% | 40.3% |
| All freemail | 1,415,154 | 17.6% | 1.1% | 2.1% | 74.0% |
| All .net addresses | 1,252,193 | 17.6% | 0.6% | 28.8% | 19.9% |
Non-freemail includes consumer ISP mailboxes; a business-only cut is on the benchmarks page. Method and every other cut: Lead List Quality Benchmarks 2026. Risky and role on the EarthLink row: 1.4%.
EarthLink answers almost every probe with a deferral, so nearly nine in ten addresses return unknown. Confirmed invalid is a tenth and confirmed valid is close to zero. The provider is a relic of dial-up and early broadband and most lists carrying it are decades old.
EarthLink was one of the largest US dial-up providers in the late 1990s and kept consumer mailboxes alive through several ownership changes. Its gateway now defers almost every probe, which hides how many addresses are actually dead. On a modern list the domain is a fossil: any file carrying it in volume was compiled from records at least fifteen years old, and the contacts that remain are retired consumers rather than business buyers.
On confirmed-invalid rate, EarthLink ranks 16 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind T-Online at 13.9%, ahead of AT&T at 10.1%.
On unknown rate, EarthLink ranks 2 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind BigPond (Telstra) at 87.0%, ahead of PeoplePC at 85.8%.
On confirmed-valid share, EarthLink ranks 27 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Hotmail Australia at 2.3%, ahead of Bluewin (Swisscom) at 0.4%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of EarthLink mailboxes. Unknown and catch-all measure what verification could not confirm, which depends on the provider's gateway policy during the window as much as on the addresses. The lists are the ones customers chose to upload, so segments dominated by a few large uploads carry their age and source. Method and limitations: benchmarks page.
Most EarthLink results are unknown because the gateway defers verification probes. Nothing in that number says the mailboxes are dead; it says email verification alone cannot clear this segment.
EarthLink runs at 10.7% confirmed invalid, ordinary for a list that has not been checked in a while; the failures are closed mailboxes and should be removed.
Catch-all is negligible on EarthLink (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Confirmed valid is 1.0%. Send to that slice from the primary domain and treat the rest of the EarthLink segment as unreachable by cold email.
Do not spend budget re-checking EarthLink unknowns. Keep confirmed-valid contacts if any, and treat the domain as a staleness marker for the whole list.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.0% of EarthLink addresses in the corpus. Role addresses are rare here, as expected for a mailbox provider.
10.7% of 65,636 EarthLink addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
86.9%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; re-check after a week or use a second channel.
Not in practice: 0.0% of EarthLink addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
1.0% confirmed valid at verification time. Keep bounces under 2% and complaints under 0.3% on the send, and re-verify the segment before every send.
Upload the file and see valid, invalid, catch-all and unknown per row, with the EarthLink segment against this benchmark. 100 free checks a month, unknowns refunded.
Ayoub built BounceZero's 5-stage validation pipeline, its dedicated BGP-announced IP infrastructure, and the Patroni HA PostgreSQL cluster behind every verification. Previously built high-volume email delivery infrastructure. Trained at 1337 Benguerir (École 42 network, 2019). Open-source: bgp_analyzer.
Invalid, catch-all and unknown rates per email provider and country domain, 2026
2,158,955 .com addresses verified April to October 2026
2,095,440 .de addresses verified April to October 2026
17,961 .edu addresses verified April to October 2026
100,516 .fi addresses verified April to October 2026
119,582 .fr addresses verified April to October 2026
801,225 Gmail addresses verified April to October 2026
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