What is a Spam Trap and How to Create Your Own

Spam traps are email addresses used to lure spammers into using them. This makes it easier to identify spam addresses and permanently block them.

ESPs use spam traps in their war against spammers, figuring out whick IP addresses are used for sending these unwanted messages and blacklist them. These IPs will have such a bad reputation that will lead to extremely high bounce rates.

How can you make your own spam trap?

The only thing you have to do is create a new email address with the ESP of your choice (it doesn’t matter if it’s gmail, hotmail, yahoo or your own domain) and put it somewhere in your website or your blog.

Make sure you don’t use this email in any registration form or to opt-in for some newsletter. The spammers have special programs called crawlers that are collecting these email addresses.

When you start receiving emails in that address you will know 100% it is sent from a spammer. You can then report it if you wish.