You might be noticing higher-than-usual levels of hard bounces addresses when trying to mail Earthlink subscribers.

It turns out that Earthlink has changed how they handle invalid addresses.

From what we can tell, Earthlink subscriber email addresses that have been inactive for more than 90 days are automatically deleted from Earthlink's system. This means that if an Earthlink user has abandoned their email address, after 90 days, any attempts to send mail to that address will be returned as a hard bounce, with a notification that states, "Due to extended inactivity new mail is not currently being accepted for this mailbox."

This means that your hard bounces at Earthlink are going to go up, until those now-invalid and abandoned addresses are converted to undeliverable status by ExactTarget's Bounce Mail Manager (BMM) logic.

Don't fret; this is how the system is supposed to work. These addresses really are abandoned, and attempts to mail these addresses really are supposed to be rejected with a hard bounce. ExactTarget's BMM system will quickly invalidate these bad addresses and move them out of the way; helping to improve your overall email deliverability to Earthlink subscribers.

If you're wondering exactly what domains Earthlink controls, here's a list: http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/commercial/

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Deliverability Services team at deliverability@exacttarget.com.