What Disban classifies
Disban classifies an email domain, not a mailbox or a person. Every result has one of six categories (disposable, free, alias, testing, parked, unknown) and a separate mail_routing status (routable, invalid or unknown). Disban does not connect to mail servers to test individual mailboxes, and no AI model makes live classification decisions.
Evidence, strongest first
1. Domains observed in disposable providers' live public inbox pools, collected continuously and published as reviewed releases that expire unless the domain is seen again. 2. Mail servers operated by a reviewed disposable service: a new domain that receives mail on those servers is classified before it appears on any list. Each operator rule records a named reviewer, the evidence, and an expiry date; 15 operators are approved as of 8 October 2026. 3. An owner-verified collection of known disposable domains, used as exact-domain evidence. 4. Reviewed corrections submitted through support.
When evidence is weak
Old list membership on its own is not treated as proof. A domain whose only evidence is historical list membership returns unknown with historical_disposable: true, so your policy can decide how to treat it. Unknown always means there was not enough evidence, never that the domain is safe.
Protections against false positives
Before any disposable evidence is applied, the domain is checked against a catalog of 711 provider records: 551 consumer email providers, 47 managed mail platforms, 51 shared hosting services, 25 shared subdomain namespaces, 20 privacy-relay providers, 14 parking services and 3 testing services. Shared platforms are never classified from one tenant's behaviour, and a disposable listing on a free subdomain service never spreads to its other subdomains. Every data release must also pass a gate of 531 consumer and ISP email domains that must never be classified as disposable.
How mail routing is checked
Disban looks up the domain's MX records and the addresses of its mail servers. If there are no MX records, it follows the standard fallback to the domain's own address records. A null MX record, a missing domain or mail servers without public addresses mark routing as invalid. Results are cached for minutes, not days. If a lookup cannot finish in time, routing is unknown and the API returns 503 with a Retry-After delay instead of a guess.
Freshness
Provider collectors and certificate-transparency monitoring run continuously, and checks on domains Disban has not seen before queue them for review. Evidence carries review and expiry dates, so a classification lapses unless it is renewed. The public directory lists only providers that have passed editorial review.
Corrections
If a result is wrong, send the domain and your evidence through the support page. Reviewed corrections apply to new checks immediately. Saved results in an account are snapshots of what was returned at the time and are not recalculated.