A spam trap is an address that looks real but does not belong to an active person who signed up for anything. Mailbox providers and blocklist operators use them to identify senders who do not collect addresses properly or clean their lists.
Why it matters
Hitting a trap can lower your sender reputation or get your IP listed on a DNSBL, which then causes broad deliverability problems. There are two common types. A pristine trap was never used by a person and is published where only scrapers will find it, so any mail to it suggests harvested addresses. A recycled trap is an old abandoned mailbox that the provider has reactivated after it started bouncing.
Example
A retailer mails a list bought from a broker. Thousands of addresses on it were scraped from web pages, including a few pristine traps. Within days the retailer's IP appears on a blocklist and mail to major providers starts landing in spam.
The fix is not to ask for removal first; it is to stop mailing that list and rebuild with double opt-in.
Common mistakes
- Believing you can identify and remove traps; they are deliberately indistinguishable from normal addresses.
- Mailing old inactive subscribers after years of silence, which is where recycled traps often lurk.
- Buying or renting lists to grow quickly.
Related
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यह पेज सामान्य जानकारी है, जिसे हमारी संपादकीय टीम ने लिखा है और दस्तावेज़ीकरण बदलने पर अपडेट किया जाता है। सर्वर और प्रदाता अलग-अलग होते हैं, इसलिए बदलाव पहले सुरक्षित तरीके से जाँचें। देखें: संपादकीय नीति और अस्वीकरण.