Cox.net now a Yahoo domain


If you're one of those people who rolls up domains to groupings based on mailbox provider, you'll want to take note of this one. As of sometime in October, the MX record for cox.net has been updated. Previously, mail was handled by cloudfilter.net, which appears to be owned by Cloudmark/Proofpoint. Now, the MX record for cox.net points to Yahoo, seemingly the same MX records used for all other common Yahoo domains.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. Back in January, I warned that this was coming.

How many active mailboxes does cox.net have? I'm not sure. Statista suggests that Cox had 3.05 million active subscribers in 2022, but that isn't specific enough to denote those with active email accounts, nor is it particularly recent.

In the October 2024 top ten million domains, Cox ranks below Comcast, but above Charter:
  1. comcast.net (77)
  2. cox.net (1588)
  3. charter.net (12755)
Though, I don't know if this is a fair comparison as it's ranked based on web traffic, not number of mailboxes.

Senders, it should be safe to treat this domain how you would treat any other domains hosted by Yahoo, like yahoo.com. The configuration here appears slightly different, than, say, AT&T, where AT&T inbound consumer email goes through a separate gateway and filtering before landing in webmail powered by Yahoo Mail. The cox.net mailboxes, from my tiny external view, appear to be more directly and completely integrated into Yahoo Mail.

Top domains hosted by Yahoo Mail include: aim.com, aol.co.uk, aol.com, aol.de, aolnews.com, compuserve.com, cs.com, epix.net, frontier.com, frontiernet.net, geocities.com, netscape.com, rogers.com, sky.com, spinner.com, verizon.net, wow.com, yahoo.co.uk, yahoo.com, yahoo.com.br, yahoo.com.tw, yahoo.de, yahoo.fr, ymail.com (and many more). You can find a recent snapshot of top Yahoo-hosted email domains here.

Frontier is another example of a home broadband provider whose consumer mailboxes are hosted by Yahoo Mail. Neither Frontier nor Cox is owned by Yahoo; they've simply outsourced email service.
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