Netcom is a Legacy US ISP mailbox. Across 22,084 Netcom addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 32.0% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 35.5% unknown and 29.1% confirmed valid. Unknown dominates because the gateway defers probes.
The Netcom row is all 22,084 addresses verified in the six months to October 2026; the other rows are the benchmarks from the same corpus. Risky and role results fill each row to 100%.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netcom | 22,084 | 32.0% | 0.0% | 35.5% | 29.1% |
| 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% |
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 Netcom row: 3.4%.
One of the oldest consumer email brands still resolving. A third of addresses confirm invalid, a third return unknown, and a third confirm valid, which for a domain this old is a surprisingly high survival rate.
Netcom was one of the first commercial US internet providers, acquired by MindSpring and then EarthLink, and its ix.netcom.com addresses date from the mid-1990s. The surviving mailboxes belong to early adopters who never changed address, which explains the surprisingly high confirmed-valid share for a domain this old. The segment is tiny on any modern list, and its presence marks a file compiled from very old records.
On confirmed-invalid rate, Netcom ranks 7 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Live.nl at 32.8%, ahead of TPG at 30.1%.
On unknown rate, Netcom ranks 11 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind SBCGlobal at 36.3%, ahead of MindSpring at 34.8%.
On confirmed-valid share, Netcom ranks 13 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind MindSpring at 30.3%, ahead of iCloud Mail at 20.0%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of Netcom 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 Netcom 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.
Netcom fails at 32.0%, which is 2.2 times the business-list rate; the segment is a relic and so, probably, is the list around it.
Catch-all is negligible on Netcom (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Just over 29% confirmed valid: reachable today, re-verified before every send, since only 19.2% of addresses were still valid 90 days after a check in BounceZero's decay study.
Act on confirmed verdicts. The segment is tiny on any modern list; its presence says the list is old.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.0% of Netcom addresses in the corpus. Role addresses are rare here, as expected for a mailbox provider.
32.0% of 22,084 Netcom addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
35.5%. 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 Netcom addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
29.1% 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 Netcom 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
29,328 iPrimus addresses verified April to October 2026
1,193,715 .it addresses verified April to October 2026
48,102 Live.nl (Outlook.com Netherlands) addresses verified April to October 2026
104,996 Luukku addresses verified April to October 2026
39,022 MindSpring addresses verified April to October 2026
1,252,193 .net addresses verified April to October 2026
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