Spam trap
An email address used to collect and monitor unsolicited mail. It never signs up for anything, so any mail it receives shows how the sender got the address.
What it means
M3AAWG defines a spam trap as an email address used to collect, record and monitor spam and other unsolicited or abusive email, designed to be indistinguishable from other addresses and found on all kinds of networks, corporate and freemail. Traps do not send email or subscribe to lists, so mail reaching one means the address was obtained without permission or kept long after it stopped being valid.
Operators use trap data to judge IP and domain reputation and content, and it feeds DNSBLs and other reputation systems. The usual types are pristine, recycled and typo traps.
Traps cannot be found by looking at a list. M3AAWG treats a trap hit as a sign of an acquisition problem: fix how addresses are collected, confirmed and retired rather than hunting for the trap.
Related terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- M3AAWG: Help! I hit a spam trap! (February 2023)m3aawg.org
- Spamhaus: ZEN blocklistspamhaus.org
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes