Spam Traps: Issues and Solutions

Spam traps are email addresses used to monitor for, identify and catch spam email messages. While their purpose is to ultimately protect our inboxes from unwanted emails, they can sometimes cause problems for legitimate senders. To understand why it happens and avoid getting stuck in spam traps, let’s look into their types, the issues they create, and how we can minimize the risks.

Types of spam traps:

1. Pristine Spam Traps: These email addresses have never been used by a sender. They can usually be found on mailing lists that were bought from third parties and that may not have been ethically sourced. In cases when contact lists were created by simply scraping the Internet for email addresses (usually with the use of special software), there is a chance it will contain pristine spam traps that have been deliberately placed by anti-spam organizations on various websites.
2. Recycled Spam Traps: These email addresses were once used by real individuals but were abandoned and repurposed as spam traps. These addresses may have belonged to employees who have left a company, or general addresses like info@ or sales@.
3. Typo Spam Traps: These are email addresses that contain an error, such as when a user misspells their domain name and writes gmal.com instead of gmail.com. It often happens unintentionally, but can still be an indicator that the sender is using poorly managed lists or engaging in sloppy list acquisition practices.
4. Honeypot Spam Traps: Just as the name suggests, honeypots are meant to attract and identify spammers who use illegitimate methods to create their email lists. These email addresses are specifically set up in hidden parts of websites or are directly planted in email lists offered for sale or trade.

Spam Traps Issues

• Deliverability Issues: When you hit spam traps, your email deliverability can be severely impacted, as your emails might get blocked and bounced to spam folders by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email services. The result is significantly reduced effectiveness of your email campaigns.
• Reputation Damage: Being flagged as a spammer due to spam traps makes your customers trust you less, reduces engagement, and negatively affects your brand's image and reputation.
• Legal Consequences: In some cases, hitting spam traps can lead to legal consequences, especially under regulations like GDPR in the EU or CAN-SPAM in the U.S.

Dealing with Spam Traps

1. Use permission-based lists: The best way to avoid spam traps is to send emails only to those recipients who have provided their voluntary consent to receive communications from you. Never use purchased email lists or email addresses that were obtained through other questionable means.
2. Maintain your email list hygiene: Regularly go through your email lists to remove inactive or unengaged subscribers. Similarly, pay attention to the spelling of email domains. Use the power of AI tools that can help you with keeping your list up to date and decrease the risk of hitting spam traps.
3. Monitor your email bounce rates: Regular monitoring is extremely important for the timely detection of unusually high bounce rates. If you notice that your emails bounce, especially hard-bounce, that may often be an indicator of the presence of spam traps on your list.
4. Use an email validator: Use email validation to identify and remove spam traps from your list. Services like Sendigram have advanced algorithms that can detect spam traps and other invalid email addresses, helping you maintain a clean and healthy email list.

• If you want to identify spam traps, just use Sendigram’s Email Checker by following this link - https://sendigram.com/email-checker/.
• If you want to find out more about spam traps and how to deal with them, check out this article on Sendigram https://sendigram.com/blog/how-to-stop-emails-going-to-spam/.
• If you have any questions or need assistance with spam traps or other email deliverability issues, feel free to contact us.