Use this article to understand what spam traps are, how they end up in your contact list, and what steps to take to avoid hitting them — or to recover email sending privileges if Intercom has already restricted your workspace.
Spam traps are email addresses set up to catch senders with poor list practices. Unlike bounces, they give no signal — they silently damage your sender reputation and can get you blocklisted. There are three kinds:
Note: This article applies to workspace admins who send outbound email from Intercom. If your workspace already has email sending restrictions in place, see the steps at the bottom of this article to have them reviewed.
Recycled traps: These are addresses that have previously been used by real people, but no longer are and have been repurposed to monitor senders who fail to maintain clean lists.
Typo traps: These are commonly mistyped addresses such as gmail.con that are accidental inclusions due to user errors.
Pristine traps: These are addresses created exclusively for catching spammers. They are never used by real people and signal issues with purchased, scraped, or poorly curated email lists.
How did you get spam traps in your app?
There are many ways spam trap emails can arrive in your app, but the most common ways are:
List acquisition: Purchasing or borrowed a list of email addresses. Please see our Email Sending Guidelines for more information about this.
User acquisition: Not verifying or confirming email addresses at sign-up can mean addresses contain errors. Using tools like mailcheck can reduce errors and entering details twice can prevent errors but getting people to confirm with double opt-in is the best ✨
List hygiene: Even legitimate senders can hit a recycled spam trap if they don't clean their lists. Recycled addresses are old email addresses not in use anymore which are now being managed by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or a blocklist. It is recommended to clean your user list of old, disengaged users once every 6 months.
Spam traps are especially challenging to detect as they mimic real inboxes and often give no indicators, such as bounces or engagement, making traditional tools ineffective against identifying them. They also cannot be identified using validation tools or user behavior metrics, as they are designed to appear indistinguishable from legitimate email addresses.
What happens if you hit spam traps with your Intercom messages?
If your app hits a significant number of spam traps, Intercom will limit or deny email sending privileges for your app while this is being investigated. Hitting spam traps is dangerous and can cause Intercom's sending infrastructure to be added to blocklists. We may request you to clean your list to lower the trap hits in future sends.
Additionally, repeated interaction with spam traps can result in lowered sender reputation with ISPs and being placed on blocklists by major providers, further hindering your deliverability.
We've outlined the steps you should take to get your email sending privileges back. If we don't see improvement, we may suspend your email sending privileges permanently.
How do I implement double opt-in?
Double opt-in is a two-step process for sign-up, sending your new sign-ups an email with a unique confirmation link to click before they will receive any further email from you.
Double opt-in proves that your new sign-up owns the provided email address and that it's valid. It also gives you permission to send emails to that address.
How do I validate user emails at sign-up?
It's possible to stop bad sign-ups before they join your app. There are some email addresses which obviously don't belong to real humans.
You can do some simple validation of the formatting of addresses during sign-up or you can employ the help of a third-party service.
How do I clean my Intercom People list?
Consider using professional email verification tools such as NeverBounce (a third-party service that checks lists for invalid or outdated addresses) to ensure your contact lists are clean.
If a user or lead hasn't interacted with you or your platform in a few months, it's likely time to say goodbye. We recommend only messaging users who have been active within the last 6 months. You can easily archive inactive users with the filters on your main user list.
If your app is hitting a lot of recycled spam traps, the best course of action is to clean your list of inactive users.
How do I archive inactive users?
Archiving inactive users is the most effective fix for recycled spam trap hits. Go to Contacts > People and filter for users or leads where "Last seen more than 180 days ago."
To archive all users matching the filter, hover over the filter tag and click Archive all users who match these filters now. To archive a selection manually, check the users you want, click More, then select Archive users. To archive a single user, open their profile and click Archive.
Archiving is a soft delete — if an archived user returns to your platform and signs in, their profile and conversations are automatically restored.
How do I target active, engaged users only?
Sending to disengaged users increases the risk of hitting recycled spam traps and damaging your sender reputation. Regularly analyze your email campaign performance to identify weak areas such as misleading subject lines or ineffective targeting, and proactively test campaigns before sending.
Sending email to disengaged users can damage your brand and sending reputation. It's best practice to send messages to engaged users. You can target customers who were "Last seen", "Last heard from" and "Last opened email" in your app using Rules in the email composer, for example:
Additionally, ensure that you exclude users who have unsubscribed or marked your emails as spam to maintain compliance and protect your sender reputation.
These tips should help you better engage with your users and leads. For more tips, see our Email Marketing Best Practices. You can also use Intercom's Email Deliverability report to monitor unusual spikes in failed sends or complaint rates, helping you identify and address potential issues proactively.
If you're having trouble, get in touch by mailing us at team@intercom.io and we'll be able to help you through.
Note: If you have sending restrictions on your workspace please follow the recommendations listed in the article above. Please implement double opt-in into your signup flow, review your message audiences, and make sure you're correctly filtering out email addresses that have not been verified.
Once you have made the necessary changes, contact Intercom's support team with the details of the actions you have taken, and they will review and assess whether they can remove the sending restrictions from your workspace.
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