diff --git a/backend/README.md b/backend/README.md
index 72c6db051..6621118c1 100644
--- a/backend/README.md
+++ b/backend/README.md
@@ -55,7 +55,6 @@ These are the environment variables used to configure the HTTP server. To pass t
 | `RCH_HTTP_HOST`                     | No                          | The host name to bind the HTTP server to.                                                                                                                                                                                                  | `127.0.0.1` |
 | `PORT`                              | No                          | The port to bind the HTTP server to, often populated by the cloud provider.                                                                                                                                                                | `8080`      |
 | `RCH_HOTMAIL_USE_HEADLESS`          | No                          | Set to a running WebDriver process endpoint (e.g. `http://localhost:4444`) to use a headless navigator to Hotmail's password recovery page to check Hotmail/Outlook addresses. We recommend `chromedriver` as it allows parallel requests. | not defined |
-| `RCH_SMTP_TIMEOUT`                  | No                          | The default timeout of each SMTP connection, in seconds. Can be overwritten in each request using the `smtp_timeout` field.                                                                                                                | 10s         |
 | `RCH_SENTRY_DSN`                    | No                          | If set, bug reports will be sent to this [Sentry](https://sentry.io) DSN.                                                                                                                                                                  | not defined |
 | `RCH_HEADER_SECRET`                 | No                          | If set, then all HTTP requests must have the `x-reacher-secret` header set to this value. This is used to protect the backend against public unwanted HTTP requests.                                                                       | undefined   |
 | `RCH_DATABASE_MAX_CONNECTIONS`      | No                          | (Bulk) Connections created for the database pool                                                                                                                                                                                           | 5           |