MindSpring is a Legacy US ISP mailbox (EarthLink). Across 39,022 MindSpring addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 25.6% were invalid, 0.0% catch-all, 34.8% unknown and 30.3% confirmed valid. Catch-all and unknown together mean a large share cannot be confirmed.
The MindSpring row is all 39,022 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MindSpring | 39,022 | 25.6% | 0.0% | 34.8% | 30.3% |
| 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 MindSpring row: 9.2%.
MindSpring is an EarthLink legacy brand. A quarter of addresses are confirmed invalid and a third return unknown, with the rest confirmed valid. The mix shows the gateway behaving less consistently than EarthLink's main domain.
MindSpring was an Atlanta dial-up provider that merged into EarthLink in 2000, and its mailboxes have been carried along ever since. The mixed result profile, with a third each of invalid, unknown and valid, reflects a gateway that defers some probes and answers others. The surviving contacts are long-standing consumer customers; the domain's presence on a list says more about the list's age than about any buyer.
On confirmed-invalid rate, MindSpring ranks 11 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind SFR at 28.7%, ahead of Luukku at 18.2%.
On unknown rate, MindSpring ranks 12 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Netcom at 35.5%, ahead of AT&T at 26.4%.
On confirmed-valid share, MindSpring ranks 12 of 29 providers in the corpus, just behind Bbox (Bouygues Telecom) at 38.1%, ahead of Netcom at 29.1%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of MindSpring 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.
About one in 3 MindSpring addresses cannot be confirmed either way. That is gateway behaviour, not a verdict; route those contacts to phone or LinkedIn and re-check after a week.
Roughly one in 4 MindSpring addresses is dead, against about one in 7 across non-freemail lists.
Catch-all is negligible on MindSpring (0.0%); when this provider does return valid, the mailbox accepted the probe itself rather than a blanket accept.
Just over 30% 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 the confirmed verdicts and re-check unknowns once. Expect the segment to be small and elderly.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 0.0% of MindSpring addresses in the corpus. Role addresses are rare here, as expected for a mailbox provider.
25.6% of 39,022 MindSpring addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
34.8%. 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 MindSpring addresses returned catch-all, so a valid verdict means the mailbox exists.
30.3% 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 MindSpring 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
48,102 Live.nl (Outlook.com Netherlands) addresses verified April to October 2026
104,996 Luukku addresses verified April to October 2026
1,252,193 .net addresses verified April to October 2026
87,309 .nl addresses verified April to October 2026
36,773 .nz addresses verified April to October 2026
38,181 Optimum addresses verified April to October 2026
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