Spamtraps - A.K.A. Honeypots
A spam trap starts with an email address. Re-used or recycled spam traps may have started out as some real person’s actual email addresses. At some point, the original user either closed or abandoned their email account. The ISP tracked noted that the account had been idle or closed for a long time, and then started sending hard bounce notifications to anyone who mailed to it.
Just how long an address has to sit idle and then send hard bounce warnings before it is used as a spam trap is a secret known only to ISPs. Anyone who send emails to that address after if has changed into a spamtrap is in trouble. The whole process of converting a regular email address from an actual account into a spam trap is called gravestoning
Spam Traps come in two different varieties:
- Pure, Pristine, True Spamtraps (Honeypots): Email address that were created from scratch by the ISP or by an anti-spam entity. Those anti-spam entities can be blacklists (Spamhaus, Spamcop), 3rd-party filters (Cloudmark), or mailbox providers.
- Recycled Traps: These are email accounts that have been abandoned and are no longer in use. ISPs and Blacklist Companies will use these accounts and will block you if emails are being sent to them. Their justification is that if they aren't active anymore, so they should not still be receiving email.
To learn more about spamtraps and how to avoid them - view the blog article How To Conquer the Dreaded Spam Trap