Spamtraps

What are spamtraps?

Spamtraps are email addresses used by major ISPs, as well as by companies that have the purpose of curbing spam (e.g. blacklists and companies with anti-spam products), to detect spammers.

These email addresses are kept secret so that anyone who has a spamtrap in their mailing list is easily detected as a spammer. Sending to spamtrap addresses not only harms the sending reputation, but also often leads to blacklisting and other penalties.

There is nothing behind a spamtrap (it is just a decoy) because the email was not used in any type of subscription or authorized anyone to send emails to it. Therefore, whoever sends to that address (spamtrap) has obtained it fraudulently and doesn’t have permission to send the message.

Spamtraps are used to detect spammers. There are different types of spamtraps and their number is continuously increasing:

Pure Spamtraps or honeypots.

These are new email addresses that have never been used before. They are created by ISPs and companies struggling to control spam, which are then included in places where only an email extraction tool can capture them (they are not visible to people).

Recycled Spamtraps

The creators of spamtraps reactivate domains and/or email addresses that were not used for several years, so they can detect senders that are not following the correct rules.

Spamtraps from invalid addresses

Their impact is less serious than in the two previous cases, since they are traps generated with typing errors in the email address itself. They generate hard bounces and if you don’t try to send again to the same email address, your sender score reputation will not be affected.

2. How to avoid spamtraps?

Keeping a good sender score reputation is a costly job and requires a lot of effort. For this reason, no one wants to have spamtraps in their contact lists, to avoid it you just have to put into practice three tips:

– Don’t buy databases. When you buy a database, you have no control over the way in which the list was created and you will not have the permission to send a newsletters to the contacts. So it may contain spamtraps.

– Only send to double opt-in addresses. Use a double opt-in subscription form to capture the emails that will make up your contact list and this will ensure that you don’t collect spamtrap addresses.

– Keep your contact list updated. Getting a lead is expensive, but it is useless to send mass mailing campaigns to addresses that never open your messages or soft bounces, keep only those that show some kind of interest or interaction with your mailings.