Contact data terms, defined plainly.

MX record: a DNS record that names the mail servers accepting email for a domain. No MX record usually means the domain cannot receive mail.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the conversation servers use to hand email to each other. Verifiers use its recipient step to ask about a mailbox without sending anything.

Catch-all: a domain whose mail server accepts mail for every address, real or not. No verifier can confirm a single mailbox on one. See the catch-all guide.

Greylisting: an anti-spam method where a server temporarily refuses mail from a new sender and waits for a retry. It can leave verification results unknown.

Role account: an address for a function rather than a person, such as info@, sales@ or support@.

Disposable domain: a provider of temporary inboxes that expire after a short time, often used to get past sign-up forms.

Hard bounce: a permanent delivery failure, such as a mailbox or domain that does not exist. Suppress the address at once.

Soft bounce: a temporary failure, such as a full mailbox or a server that is down. It may succeed on retry.

Sender reputation: the track record mailbox providers keep for your domain and IP addresses, used to decide inbox or spam. Bounces and complaints lower it.

Email pattern: the format a company uses for addresses, such as first.last or flast. Email finders learn it from published addresses. See how email finders work.

Risk score: in Ravn, a grade from A to F summarising how safe an address is to send to, alongside a status and reason.

Enrichment: adding missing fields to a record you already have, such as a company's size and industry from its domain.

Waterfall enrichment: trying several sources or tools in order and stopping at the first good answer, to fill more fields than any one source could.

Firmographics: facts about a company rather than a person: size, employee count, industry, location, founding year.

ICP: ideal customer profile, the description of companies most likely to buy from you, usually written in firmographic terms.

NAICS: the North American Industry Classification System, a set of numeric codes for industries. Ravn's company enrichment API returns them where known.

E.164: the international phone number format: a plus sign, country code and number, with no spaces, such as +14155550123.

Line type: whether a number is mobile, landline, VoIP, toll-free or another kind. It can be estimated from the numbering plan or confirmed with a live carrier check.

Carrier lookup: a live query that returns the network a number currently belongs to and its real line type, which can differ from the numbering plan after a number is ported.

VoIP: Voice over IP, a number delivered over the internet rather than a traditional phone line. See the phone validation API.

MCP: the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI apps like Claude discover and call tools on other services. See the MCP server page.

OAuth: a sign-in standard where you approve an app's access on the provider's own page, and the app receives a token instead of a password.

PKCE: Proof Key for Code Exchange, a one-time secret added to OAuth sign-in so an intercepted redirect cannot be used by anyone else.

API key: a secret string that identifies your account to an API. Ravn keys start with rw_live_ and are stored hashed.

Rate limit: a cap on how many requests you can make in a period. A limited request gets a 429 response with a Retry-After header.

Spending cap: on Ravn, the most you will pay in a month for lookups beyond the 10,000 the plan includes (default $100; you can change it).

Lookup: on Ravn, the unit a tool call costs. Every tool is one lookup, a miss is free, and the Ravn plan is $24 a month with 10,000 lookups included, then $1 per 1,000. See pricing.

Provider key: your own People Data Labs or Twilio account key, connected to Ravn so people, company and carrier lookups run on it. Ravn makes the call and stores nothing; without a key those tools return provider_key_required.

Hashed email: an email address run through a one-way function such as SHA-256 after normalising it. It is pseudonymised, not anonymous. See hashed audiences explained.

MAID: mobile advertising ID, a device identifier used for ad targeting on phones. Not available from Ravn yet.

Data broker: a business that sells or licenses personal information about people it has no direct relationship with. Several US states require brokers to register.

Opt-out: a person's request to stop receiving messages, or to stop their data being sold, shared or returned. Ravn's is at /privacy#optout.

DROP: California's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, which lets a resident send one deletion request to registered data brokers. Ravn isn't a data broker and isn't registered with DROP; use its opt-out instead.

FCRA: the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the US law governing data used for credit, employment, insurance and housing decisions. Ravn's terms forbid those uses.

CAN-SPAM: the US law for commercial email: honest headers and subjects, a postal address, and a working opt-out.

CASL: Canada's anti-spam law, which generally requires consent before sending commercial electronic messages.

GDPR: the EU's data protection law, which requires a lawful basis and transparency for processing personal data, including work emails.

CCPA/CPRA: California's privacy law, giving residents rights to know, delete, correct and opt out of the sale or sharing of their data. See the compliance guide.