How Yahoo Emails Impact Deliverability and Sender Reputation
Updated March 29, 2024
1 min read
Over the past decade, Yahoo Mail's policies have evolved. More recently, this directly impacts the ability to classify their email addresses as Deliverable.
Last October, Yahoo Mail began deactivating what they label "inactive email addresses". Although these emails are real, they are temporarily disabled due to inactivity. Since these emails belonged to real people, most email verification services would classify them as deliverable. However, once an email is sent to these recipients, it may be rejected upon delivery. This then leads to high bounce rates which negatively impacts your sender reputation.
What does this mean for you
Emailable Customers
As of September 7th, 2023, we have officially reclassified Yahoo email addresses to ensure we’re providing the most accurate email verification results. Yahoo emails will now be classified as Risky instead of Deliverable because there is no verification method that can guarantee deliverability. This new update will further help Emailable protect your sender reputation.
It’s important to note that you can still contact Yahoo email addresses with this new change. You will always have the option to customize your export and include these addresses.
Please see our official release here for more details
Other Email Verification Customers
Many email verification services have not updated their platform to accurately reflect the deliverability of Yahoo email addresses. As a result, they are incorrectly classifying these email addresses and putting your sender reputation at risk. If you’ve noticed a higher-than-normal bounce rate, don’t wait to take action. It’s important to be proactive when it comes to managing your sender reputation. Try using a service such as Emailable to verify your email addresses.
Yahoo Customers
In addition to taking note of the changes above, remember to log in to your Yahoo account at least once a year to avoid becoming inactive. According to Yahoo Mail’s update on July 15, 2023, inactive accounts will automatically be deleted and cannot be restored. For now, this change only impacts free accounts and not paid accounts. For more details, please see a summary of Yahoo Mail’s most notable changes below.
Notable Yahoo Mail Updates
| Date | Update |
|---|---|
| July 2023 | Account Closures: As of July 15, 2023 - Yahoo Mail will close down all inactive accounts that have not logged in the last 12 months. All contents will be deleted and cannot be restored. These inactive emails will then be released to the public to claim as new ones. |
| October 2022 | Deactivation: Yahoo will deactivate any accounts that have not logged in for the past 12 months. Users will then have 30 days to reactivate their accounts. |
| October 2022 | BIMI: When senders implement BIMI (Brand Indicators of Message Identification), Yahoo will display a verified checkmark next to the sender’s address and logo. |
| June 2013 | Closure & Mandatory Updates: Yahoo shuts down Mail Classic, and introduces a new version of Yahoo Mail with a major privacy change. All users will now need to allow Yahoo to automatically conduct content scanning and analysis of their inboxes. |