What is a risky email address?
Also called: unknown, unverifiable, accept-all result
Risky is the verification status for an address on a working domain whose mailbox could not be confirmed. It covers catch-all domains that accept every address, servers that refused to answer, greylisting and role addresses. It is not a soft form of invalid: it means the check was inconclusive and the truth is unknown.
The risky category is the honest part of a verifier. Folding risky into valid makes a tool's results look cleaner and hands the bounces to the customer; folding it into invalid throws away deliverable addresses.
A useful test for any vendor is to verify an address you invented at a real company domain. If it comes back valid, either the domain is catch-all and the tool hid it, or no mailbox check happened at all.
How to use risky addresses: send to them in a separate, smaller batch, from a domain or inbox you can afford to rest, and watch the bounce rate before committing the rest of the list.
Example
[email protected], risky, Server would not confirm — the server answered with a temporary refusal instead of a yes or a no.How SimpleVerifier handles it
Anything the mailbox probe could not confirm is returned as risky, never as valid. The reason column says why: Accepts all addresses, Role-based address, Provider hides mailbox status, Server would not confirm, or Mailbox check unavailable.
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By SimpleVerifier Team · Last reviewed 2026-10-13 · All 50 glossary terms