Trap seeding venues
Public forum posts and abandoned WordPress comment threads remain the most common seeding venues. Scraped corporate "team" pages from sites that have since been taken down account for 28% of new trap exposures we identified in Q1.
Recycled vs. pristine
Recycled traps (abandoned mailboxes converted by mailbox providers) account for 71% of trap exposures in our data. Pristine traps (created from scratch and seeded) account for 29% but cause disproportionate reputation damage when hit.
How traps arrive on lists
In rank order: purchased lists (54%), scraping tools (17%), public typo correction at signup (12%), abandoned-mailbox conversion (10%), social media auto-fill (7%).
Defenses that worked in Q1
Pre-send 7-check validation caught 89% of trap hits before send. WHOIS domain-age checks specifically caught 23% of fresh disposable domains that all six other checks passed.