HACKER Q&A
📣 solarisos

Why is 'Verified' B2B data becoming a deliverability trap?


I've been running experiments with several "top-tier" B2B data providers (the ones claiming 95%+ verification). Despite the SMTP handshakes returning "Valid," the actual deliverability and engagement are the worst I've seen in a decade.

It feels like the technical definition of "Verified" no longer correlates with "Reachable."

A few observations:

The Catch-All Silent Drop: Enterprise servers (O365/Mimecast) now seem to "accept" all mail to prevent directory harvest attacks, only to silently drop it or route it to a quarantine folder if the sender isn't on a whitelist.

Resale Fingerprinting: If a "verified" record is sold to 1,000 customers, and even 5% of them send low-quality outreach, do ISPs now "poison" that specific recipient address for all external cold mail?

The Engagement Wall: In 2026, it seems Google/Microsoft filters have moved entirely to reputation based on bi-directional interaction. If you don't have a history with a domain, your "verified" email is effectively treated as shadow-spam.

I’m curious to hear from the community: 1. Is anyone still seeing ROI on purchased lists, or has the "Data Broker" model finally been defeated by AI-driven ISP filters? 2. Has anyone found a technical workaround for the "silent drop" on catch-all domains?

  👤 solarisos Accepted Answer ✓
I'm asking this as a founder who just wasted a week on a 'clean' list with 0% bounce but near-zero opens. I’m trying to figure out if cold email as we know it is reaching a technical dead end, or if it's just that the data providers haven't caught up to modern ISP filtering. I've double-checked my SPF, DKIM, and DMARC—everything is green on my end, which points to a data/recipient-side issue.
👤 solarisos
A quick follow-up for those in the infra space: I'm seeing a weird discrepancy where 'Verified' status from most APIs seems to rely on the RCPT TO command. However, I've noticed more enterprise gateways are now returning a 250 OK for every address at a domain to thwart enumeration, but then silently dropping the packet at the transport layer if there's no sender history. If the SMTP handshake is now a 'liar,' is there any technical signal left that actually confirms a mailbox is reachable, or are we effectively flying blind?