Flag abuse and complaint contacts, such as abuse@ and legal@, and the complaint desks of listed anti-spam organizations before sending.
What the flags match
Detection works from the address itself: its local part and its domain. Kawaa does not need any sending history from you, and verification does not use complaint history, so no address is flagged because its owner once marked mail as spam. An address is flagged when it matches:
- An abuse, complaint-handling or blocklist-removal local part, such as abuse@, postmaster@, spam@, complaints@ or delist@
- A feedback-loop or legal local part, such as fbl@, feedback@, legal@ or dmca@
- A local part containing an abuse-related word joined by a hyphen, such as spam-alerts@, team-abuse@, bounce-123@ or unsubscribe-me@, or starting with one followed by digits, such as abuse1@ or spam123@
- A complaint-handling mailbox, such as abuse@, postmaster@, fbl@ or feedback@, at a reviewed list of anti-spam, feedback-loop, sender-reputation and consumer-protection organizations, such as spamhaus.org, spamcop.net and ftc.gov. Only those mailboxes match there: anyone else at a listed organization is not flagged.
With AI analysis on (options.include_ai, the default), an address whose local part contains abuse, spam or complaint but matches none of the patterns above, or an abuse@ mailbox that may be a legitimate corporate contact rather than a complaint desk, is classified for intent by the model, which can raise the flags or leave them off. So a real support address is not excluded by pattern alone, and the list above is not the only way an address can be flagged.
Risk factors
A match is a reason to look at the address before you send, not proof of what the mailbox is for. Where the address is an abuse, feedback-loop or legal desk, marketing mail to it is read by people whose job is to act on unwanted mail, and it can:
- Be reported as spam
- Damage your sender score
- Result in ISP blocks
- Get you listed on blacklists
API response
The result is the boolean data.flags.abuse_email, raised for any of the matches above. data.flags.complainer is raised as well only for the last one, a complaint-handling mailbox at a listed organization: a feedback@ or legal@ mailbox anywhere else is an abuse_email match only. Despite its name, complainer does not mean the person behind the address has complained: it means the address is one of those complaint desks. Both count toward quality_score, but an address with either flag can still score in a range that looks safe, as in the example below. Check the flags themselves before you send, alongside status. There is no separate abuse score.
{
"success": true,
"data": {
"email": "abuse@company.com",
"status": "role",
"quality_score": 70,
"flags": {
"role_account": true,
"abuse_email": true,
"complainer": false,
"spam_trap": false
}
}
}