Spam traps
How MXGuard uses spam traps to identify spammers and train its anti-spam filters.
What a spam trap is
A spam trap is an email address that exists but is never actually used: it has never signed up for a mailing list and has never been given out as a contact address.
How spam traps help fight spam
A message to a spam trap can never be legitimate — since the address never signed up for anything, any mail sent to it means the sender is collecting addresses through illegitimate means (scraping websites, purchased lists, dictionary attacks) or isn't keeping their mailing lists clean. Bulk mail sent to our traps or our customers' traps results in the sending IP addresses and domains being blocked immediately, and the messages themselves are used to train our Bayesian filters and neural network.
Types of spam traps
| Type | How it's created | What mail to it means |
|---|---|---|
| Pristine | A purpose-built address seeded across forums and websites | Automatically flagged as spam — no legitimate sender could have known the address beforehand |
| Recycled | A real address that fell out of use — a former employee, an abandoned mailbox | Badly hurts the domain/server's reputation: shows the sender isn't cleaning their address list |
| Typo/generic address | Common mailbox names like accounting@, abuse@, postmaster@, webmaster@, support@, office@, info@ that don't exist in the recipient's address list |
A spammer guessing common mailbox names — a clear sign of an automated mailing |
Scale
MXGuard runs 20,000+ spam traps of all three types worldwide. This lets us efficiently detect and automatically block botnets, potential spammers, phishing mail, and other email security threats — before they ever reach your users.