What is a Spam Trap?
nA spam trap is an email address that accepts mails but is not owned by a real person. Spam traps are used to detect bad list management practices such as email acquisition and bounce management. Usually, traps do not engage with emails.nnIn most cases, security providers and data management companies operate a large number of Spam Trap Network.nSpam Trap Networks can be largely divided into two categories:n
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- Operational Networks: Operational networks actually block mail based on their trap hits, meaning they won’t send your mail if you hit one of their traps. An example of this is Spamhaus. They are very secretive about their traps and don’t typically share any details on hits. Anyone who tells you they can identify these traps for you is not a legitimate service
- Commercial Networks: Commercial networks do not block mail based on their traps but use their traps to gain more information. Companies like SparkPost have commercial networks with the purpose of sharing details about hits to help optimize and empower their senders to identify practical issues. These hits are not sold and used to generate blocks but are more of are a ‘canary in a coal mine’ to identify likely issues with operational networks.
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