A spam trap is a valid email address used to identify spam messages. The
way it works is a company places a valid email on their website and monitors the email
it receives. As it wasn't subscribed to any email, anything
it receives must be unsolicited or spam.
Many companies that sell email lists capture email addresses from the internet. Their
spider software locates an email from a webpage. The list is then sold to unsuspecting
customers. this generally means
the address must have been publicized somewhere. Common sources for spam traps are
addresses that were once used for example:
hostmaster@, postoffice@ in such areas as domain registrations or company
contact information web pages. In some situations, addresses
that were once valid but have been re-purposed as spam trap email address.
Why Do They Matter?
Many organizations use spam traps to control spam. Generally speaking, sending emails to a
spam trap email address will lead, directly or indirectly, to being blacklisted by
the trap's owner. Organizations
that use spam traps include SpamCop, Passive Spam Block List (PSBL), Brightmail,
and most large ISPs.
How Did One Get on Our List?
Good list maintenance will prevent spam trap emails from
ever joining your list. How a spam trap came to be on your list depends on the type of
trap. Typical mechanisms include:
Purchase an email list from the internet can be tricky. If you harvest addresses, purchase harvested emails, use
email append services,
or fail to use permission based rules for your list, you risk adding spam traps
to your list. No reputable organization should use address harvesting, or list purchases
without investigating where the emails came from.
Oddly once-valid addresses and domains can sometimes be reused as a spam trap email.
If you go for a long time without mailing to an address, this may happen.
Additionally, if you do not practice bounce management, an invalid
address may remain on your list and end up a spam trap email.
How Do We Remove Them?
Spam traps are a secret. This makes removal impossible.
This leaves repermissioning your list. Send a message requiring subscribers to re-optin.
For many it's inconvenient to re-valid subscribers. And some don't
reconfirm, even though they wish to remain on the list.
Removing spam traps from lists is difficult and takes a lot of time. It's far better
to ensure they don't get on your lists in the first place.
