Spam Traps – Guide For Email Senders

What do you mean by spam traps?

Spam traps are a strategy for preventing spam. Spam traps are created by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers to attract and block spammers. Spam traps are an important fraud-fighting technique, as spam accounts for more than half of global email traffic.

About spam traps

A spam trap, also called a honeypot, looks like a real email address but isn't used by an actual person.

These addresses don't belong to anyone and aren't meant for real communication. Since spam traps never sign up for emails, getting a message from a sender marks them as a potential spammer.

Spam traps usually end up on email lists when companies don't keep their lists clean or ignore permission-based email rules.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist services like Composite Blocking and SpamCop use spam traps to catch spammers. Even legitimate senders can get caught if they don’t maintain good email hygiene or use poor list-building practices.

Fresh spam traps, which are often gathered by web scrapers, are the most harmful because ISPs consider sending to them offensive.

Kinds of spam traps

Old or recycled inbox traps

Remember that old email address you used back in high school but don’t check anymore? It might now be used as a spam trap. Internet providers and blacklist services often turn abandoned email accounts into traps to catch spam senders. These are called recycled or gray spam traps.

You are less likely to end up with one on your list if you follow proper email marketing practices. But here are two common ways it can happen:

• You got your email list from someone else and never cleaned it with a verification tool.
• You added an email a long time ago, and it’s since been turned into a trap. If that address once bounced and you didn’t remove it, it could now hurt your sender reputation.

To protect your email list:

• Remove all emails that hard bounce and avoid adding them in the first place by verifying your list.
• Delete email addresses that never open or engage with your messages.
• Only use email lists where you know people gave proper permission to be contacted.

Paying attention to your open and bounce rates is a smart first step to avoiding problems like spam traps.

Clean spam traps

ISPs and blacklist services see it as abuse when you send emails to people who never asked to hear from you.

That’s where pristine spam traps come in. These are fake email addresses placed in public spaces like forums or blog posts, where they’re meant to be picked up by web scrapers.

A lot of the email lists for sale online come from scraping websites. So if you use those lists, you might end up sending emails to these traps without knowing. ISPs use them to catch senders who don’t follow proper email marketing rules.

Because the only way these traps get on a list is through unethical practices, they’re especially damaging to your sender reputation.

Spam-monitoring domains

Domain spam traps don’t get as much attention, but they’re just as dangerous.

In this case, an entire domain is turned into a spam trap. Blacklist providers may ask the owners of unused or inactive domains to redirect their email traffic to them. Once that happens, any email address at that domain becomes a trap.

Ways to prevent spam traps

Preventing spam traps is easier than you might believe. Your email hygiene should be fine as long as you adhere to the best standards and monitor your interaction rates.

Let us now move on to some practical techniques for keeping spam traps out of your email lists and achieving the finest email marketing outcomes.

Keep track of your open rates

Open rates are a key part of email marketing. They help you understand how your content is performing and can also hint if your list has spam traps.

If someone hasn’t opened your emails in over six months, try sending a re-engagement email to see if they’re still interested.

If the email bounces, delete the address immediately, it might be a spam trap.

Even if it doesn’t bounce but they still don’t open it, it’s best to remove them. Keeping inactive contacts hurts your sender reputation.

Never buy an email list

When you buy an email list, you can not be sure how it was collected. There is a good chance it includes spam traps, which can hurt your email performance.

You also risk getting addresses that don’t help your marketing, like catch-all, role-based, or temporary emails.

Plus, sending emails to people who did not agree to hear from you breaks one of the key rules of email marketing. This often leads to spam complaints and damages your reputation.

If you’ve already purchased a list, make sure to run it through an email validation service like FareOf. We’ll help you find out how many real people are actually on that list, with 99% accuracy.

Allow double opt-in verification

Double opt-in is the first step you can do to verify you're adding an actual human to your list. Also, double opt-in requires users to confirm their desire to join your mailing list, which promotes a higher level of user interest. This leads to higher overall engagement, which is a great way to acquire ISPs' trust and support.

Note: While double opt-in is a good industry practice, keep in mind that recipients who opted into your list at one time may become inactive later. If an email address is idle for a long time, it may be turned to a recycled or gray spam trap. When facing such accounts, use list segmentation.

Verify new email addresses

Using double opt-in is a smart way to protect your email list, but it’s not enough on its own.

To add more protection, you should use an email validation API. It helps block abuse emails, typos, catch-all accounts, and other bad data that can damage your sender reputation.

With FareOf, you can validate emails in two simple ways:

• Upload your list to our platform, and we’ll clean it in bulk.
• Set up our email validation API to catch mistakes and invalid emails instantly as people sign up.

Good email hygiene is the basis of successful email marketing. Your efforts will gain the respect that they deserve, resulting in long-term benefits and an ongoing ROI.

An email checker, such as FareOf, can help you keep your list correct and clear of bad addresses.

Good email hygiene is the basis of successful email marketing. Your efforts will gain the respect that they deserve, resulting in long-term benefits and an ongoing ROI.

Evaluate your sender reputation

Your sender reputation shows if your emails are landing in spam traps. However, it's not the only factor.

Email providers consider various metrics to judge your reputation, including spam complaints, sending emails to invalid addresses, and your presence on blacklists.

Open rates are not the full picture

Some blogs and email marketers put a lot of focus on open rates, but that doesn’t show the full picture.

Most people don’t realize that every HTML email includes a tiny invisible image that has to load to track an open. If someone reads your subject line without opening the email, has HTML turned off, or blocks images, it won’t count as an open even if they saw it.

For example, if you have 1000 emails on your list and a 20 percent open rate, it doesn’t mean you should remove the 800 who didn’t register as opens. You worked hard to get those contacts, and they are still valuable.

Want to improve your email marketing performance?

• Stay in touch with your customers often and remove contacts who stop responding.
• Use double opt-in on your forms to make sure people really want to hear from you.
• If you have bought an email list, always check it with an email validation tool. It is the best way to catch spam traps and bad email addresses.
• Regularly clean your list to avoid old or recycled addresses turning into problems later.

Following good email marketing practices can feel tricky at first. But getting flagged as a spammer can seriously hurt your business and stop your emails from reaching anyone.

It’s always smarter to stick to these guidelines and protect your reputation.

Ready to get started? You can try FareOf for free and clean 100 emails to see how many spam traps we can find for you.