Only spamtraps matter, or do they?

I received mail from Mitusbishi UK over the weekend, telling me that as a subscriber I was eligible to buy a car from one of their dealers, or something. I didn’t actually read the whole thing. While I am competent in a right hand drive, even when it’s a manual, it’s not something I want to try over here in the US.
The address the message came to is one that I’ve had for around 15 years now. But it’s not an address I’ve really ever used for anything. When I have used it, the address is tagged. The bare address has never been handed out.
When I sent the report in to SmartFocus, I commented this wasn’t an opt-in address and that it was, in fact, a spamtrap. Is it? Well, it certainly never signed up for UK car offers. Or any UK mail for that matter. I’ve never opted in to things with it. No one before me had the address.
I know why I mentioned it was a spamtrap… because sometimes it seems like the only way to get some senders to pay attention is if you call the address a trap. Mail to actual users is not a problem, it’s only mail to spamtraps that gets some compliance departments interested in an issue. Without the address begin labeled a spamtrap, the address is just marked as “complaint” and removed from further sends.
I wonder if we, and I include myself in that we, have made it harder to deal with spam by focusing on spamtraps rather than permission. Sure, we did it for a good reason – it’s hard to argue that an address that has never been used by a person signed up to receive mail. But now we have companies trying to create and monetize spamtrap networks because people care about spamtraps.
It’s a less conflict laden conversation when we can say “these addresses didn’t opt-in, they don’t exist.” But somehow “spamtrap” carries more weight than “bounce.” I’m not sure that’s a good distinction, bounces are all potential traps, and I do know some people go through their incoming logs and see what addresses they are bouncing mail to and then turn those addresses on.
Focusing on traps makes some conversations easier. But maybe we need to be having harder conversations with clients and senders and marketers. Maybe lack of spamtraps isn’t a sign of a good list. Maybe good lists are quantified by other things, like response and engagement and ROI.

Yahoo Mail Deliverability FAQ Updated
Deliverability and IP addresses

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It's about the spam

Tell someone they have hit a spamtrap and they go through a typical reaction cycle.
Denial: I didn’t hit a trap! I only send opt-in mail. There must be some mistake. I’m a legitimate company, not a spammer!
Anger: What do you mean that I can’t send mail until I’ve fixed the problem? There is no problem! You can’t stop me from mailing. I’m following the law. My mail is important. I’ll sue.
Bargaining: What if I just send mail to some recipients? What if I hire an email hygiene company to remove traps from my list?
Acceptance: What can I do to make sure the people I’m mailing actually want to be on my list?
Overall, my problem with the focus on spamtraps (and complaints to a lesser extent) is that these metrics are proxies. Spamtraps are a way to objectively monitor incoming email. Mail sent to spamtraps is, demonstrably, sent without permission of the address owner. This doesn’t mean all mail from the same source is spam, but there is proof at least some of the mail is spam.
If there is enough bad mail on that list, then reworking the subscription process may be necessary to fix delivery.

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Spamhaus Speaks

There’s been a lot of discussion about Spamhaus, spam traps, and blocking. Today, Spamhaus rep Denny Watson posted on the Spamhaus blog about some of the recent large retailer listings. He provides us with some very useful information about how Spamhaus works, and gives 3 case studies of recent listings specifically for transactional messages to traps.
The whole thing is well worth a read, and I strongly encourage you to check out the whole thing.
There are a couple things mentioned in the blog that I think deserve some special attention, though.
Not all spam traps actually accept mail. In fact, in all of the 3 case studies, mail was rejected during the SMTP transaction. This did not stop the senders from continuing to attempt to mail to that address, though. I’ve heard over and over again from senders that the “problem” is that spamtrap addresses actually accept mail. If they would just bounce the messages then there would be no problem. This is clearly untrue when we actually look at the data. All of the companies mentioned are large brick and mortar retailers in the Fortune 200. These are not small or dumb outfits. Still, they have massive problems in their mail programs that mean they continue to send to addresses that bounce and have always bounced.
Listings require multiple hits and ongoing evidence of problems. None of the retailers mentioned in the case studies had a single trap hit. No, they had ongoing and repeated trap hits even after mail was rejected. Another thing senders tell me is that it’s unfair that they’re listed because of “one mistake” or “one trap hit.” The reality is a little different, though. These retailers are listed because they have horrible data hygiene and continually mail to addresses that simply don’t exist. If these retailers were to do one-and-out or even three-and-out then they wouldn’t be listed on the SBL. Denny even says that in the blog post.

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The true facts of spam traps and typo traps

I’m seeing an increase in the number of articles stating wildly wrong things about spam traps. Some have started claiming that typo traps are new. Or that typo traps are newly used by Spamhaus. These claims make for great copy, I guess. Wild claims about how the evil anti-commerce self-appointed internet police are actively trying to trap marketers get clicks. These claims also reinforce the martyr complex some senders have and gives them something to commiserate about over drinks at the next email conference.
I strongly recommend ignoring any article that claims Spamhaus started using typo traps in December 2012. In fact, you can immediately dismiss absolutely everything they have to say. They are wrong and have proven they can’t be bothered to do any fact checking.
I can’t figure out why so many people repeat the same false statements over and over and over again. They’re wrong, and no amount of explaining the truth seems to make any difference. I went looking for evidence.
First, I asked on Facebook. A bunch of my contacts on Facebook have have been running spam traps for a long time. Multiple people commented that they, personally, have been using typos to track spam since the late ’90s. These typos were on both the right hand side of the @ sign (the domain side) but also on the left hand side of the @ sign (the username).
Then, I looked through my archives of one of the anti-spam mailing lists and I see a Spamhaus volunteer mentioning that he had already been using typo traps in 2007.  I asked him about this and he pointed out these are some of his older traps and had been around for many years before that mention. 
Of course, we’ve written about typo domains used by an anti-spam group to catch spam.
The truth is, typo traps are not new and they’re not a new set of traps for Spamhaus. I’ve talked about traps over and over again. But I’m seeing more and more articles pop up that make verifiably wrong statements about spam traps. Here are a few facts about spam traps.
 

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