Spam Traps – Ultimate Guide For Email Senders: Expert Tips, Tools & More

Spam traps FAQ

As their name suggests, spam traps are literal traps for spammers. They are email addresses that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers use to lure in and block spam senders. Spam traps don’t belong to real human beings. Their only purpose is to prevent fraud.

Anti-spam organizations and ISPs are constantly at war against spammers. Spam traps are created or recycled from old, inactive email addresses to attract senders that are ignoring email best practices. Anyone who sends emails to a spam trap is most likely a spammer because that address doesn’t belong to a human being. On the other hand, it could be a legitimate email marketer that isn’t following best practices with regular email list scrubbing.

Spam traps are hard to spot due to their very nature. Not all spam traps can be identified. However, there are email scrubbers like ZeroBounce that use proprietary algorithms to spot many of the spam traps lurking in email lists. The naked eye cannot distinguish between a spam trap and a genuine email address. Internet service providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers set up spam traps and create them so they look real. The only way to spot a spam trap is to use an email scrubbing service.

You will stop hitting spam traps if you don’t buy lists and keep an eye on your unengaged subscribers. An email address should only be added to your email list if it has been verified. You can do that easily by adding an email validation API to all your sign-up forms. Keep in mind, only the subscriber should add themselves to the list and go through the double opt-in process. This proves that anyone who signs up is doing so intentionally. However, even a verified email address can turn into a spam trap over time if it’s abandoned. You can be sure that won’t happen by periodically removing anyone who isn’t engaging with your emails.

Pristine spam traps are email addresses created by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers specifically to attract, and then block, spammers. Pristine spam traps are publicly accessible online for web scrapers to find and harvest them. ISPs use pristine spam traps to detect malicious senders

Typo spam traps are email addresses created by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers to get insight into marketers’ best practices. These addresses contain intentional misspellings in the domain name but won’t bounce. ISPs use them to analyze the kind of email typo spam traps receive and detect potential malicious senders.

The only way a spam trap can end up in your list is if you don’t follow email marketing best practices. So, avoid buying email lists, remove unengaged subscribers every three months and use an email validation service to eliminate bounces.

Your sender reputation is essential in email marketing. There are several factors that determine your reputation, and one of them is your email list hygiene.
If you have a high bounce rate and your emails hit spam traps, that’s a sign you haven’t been maintaining your list. You either bought it, or you haven’t been diligent about removing bad data from a list you’ve grown yourself. Either way, your sender reputation suffers every time your emails hit a spam trap, and that affects your deliverability, as well.

When Internet Service Providers (ISPs) decide how to handle your emails, the first thing they look at is your sender reputation. So, if your reputation has taken a hit because of the spam traps in your list, ISPs see that as a sign of poor email sending behavior. As a result, they’ll either deliver your emails to people’s spam folders, or not deliver them at all. There’s good news, though. A smart email validation system can spot and remove spam traps from your list, thus helping you rebuild your reputation and improve your deliverability.

Paul Leslie
Paul Leslie

From content marketing to PR projects, we count on Paul to write content that helps and inspires. Paul has a rich background in content creation as a writer, researcher and interviewer. For the past 20 years, he has conducted more than 1,000 interviews distributed via radio and podcasts. In his free time, Paul is always down for a long walk or a good movie, and loves trying out new restaurants.