Email status colors

Every revealed email in fareof carries a status badge. The color tells you, at a glance, how confident we are that the address will actually deliver. Here is what each one means and how to act on it.

Green — Valid

status: valid

The mailbox accepts mail and looks deliverable.

Confirmed by SMTP RCPT-TO probe. Domain has valid MX records. The mail server explicitly accepted the recipient address.

Deliverability: ≈ 95–99% deliverable
Recommendation: Safe to send. Use these for cold outreach, sequencing, and auto-pilot campaigns.

Yellow — Risky

status: risky

The address looks plausible but the mail server is hiding the truth (catch-all, greylisting, accept-all).

The provider replies "OK" to every probe regardless of whether the inbox actually exists. Catch-all domains and Microsoft 365 / Workspace tenants commonly behave this way. Email may bounce.

Deliverability: ≈ 50–80% deliverable
Recommendation: Send in small batches first. Pair with a soft warmup. Watch your bounce rate — if it spikes, downgrade to gray treatment.

Gray — Unknown

status: unknown

We could not verify this address. Either no SMTP probe was possible or the result was inconclusive.

Common reasons: provider blocks SMTP probes (Google, Microsoft), the actor returned a best-guess pattern (e.g. firstname.lastname@domain), or our verifier could not connect within the timeout window.

Deliverability: Unknown
Recommendation: Treat as a hypothesis. Test with a small low-volume warm send before committing to a full sequence. Monitor bounces closely.

Red — Invalid

status: invalid

The mailbox does not exist or rejects mail.

The recipient server explicitly returned a 5xx error or the domain has no working MX records. Sending here will hard-bounce.

Deliverability: 0% — guaranteed bounce
Recommendation: Do not send. Bouncing invalid addresses hurts your sender reputation. Remove from your active list.

Red — Disposable

status: disposable

The domain belongs to a temporary / throwaway email service (e.g. mailinator, guerrillamail).

Even if the address technically receives mail, the inbox is anonymous and unmonitored. These contacts will not respond and may flag your domain.

Deliverability: Effective 0%
Recommendation: Skip. Not worth a credit, not worth a touch.

How fareof verifies email

For every reveal we run a multi-stage pipeline:

Apify enrichment resolves the most likely corporate address pattern from public signals.
MX validation confirms the domain accepts mail at all.
SMTP RCPT-TO probe asks the recipient server directly whether the mailbox exists, without sending the email.
Provider heuristics classify catch-all and accept-all behavior (yellow / risky).
Best-guess fallback emits a low-confidence pattern (gray / unknown) when the provider blocks probes.

One reveal = one credit, regardless of which color you end up with. Re-revealing the same person from any surface (lead list, extension, bulk) within the freshness window is free.