Deliverability glossary · Updated 2026-08-10
Spam trap
Also called: Honeypot address
A spam trap is an email address that exists only to catch senders using poor list practices. Mail to one is strong evidence of purchased or scraped data, and can get a domain blocklisted.
Pristine traps are addresses never used by a human and published where only a scraper would find them. Mail arriving at one proves the address was harvested, because there is no legitimate way to have obtained it.
Recycled traps are more dangerous because they were once real. A provider abandons a dormant address, hard-bounces mail to it for a period, then reactivates it as a trap. Senders who honour bounces stop in time; senders who keep retrying get caught, which makes trap hits a direct consequence of poor suppression.
Typo traps catch addresses like `gmial.com` — a genuine mistake that reveals a lack of validation. They are the mildest category but still a signal.
You cannot detect traps by inspection, and any vendor claiming to remove them is guessing. The only defence is behavioural: validate on collection, honour bounces immediately, and never mail a list you did not build.
How Raechly handles it
Address validation runs per lead inside the send path rather than only at import, and permanent suppression of bounced addresses removes the retry behaviour that recycled traps are designed to catch.
Related terms
Hard bounce
A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure — the address does not exist or the domain rejects it outright.
Sending reputation
Sending reputation is the trust score mailbox providers assign to your domain and IP based on complaint rate, bounce rate, engagement and authentication history.
Spam complaint rate
Spam complaint rate is the share of delivered messages recipients mark as spam.
Back to the full deliverability glossary, or read how these pieces fit together in how Raechly protects deliverability.