18
113 Comments

Say Goodbye to Fake Users! · Protect your projects from fake and temporary email addresses!

Hey guys,
I wanted to share a new API I've been working on that blocks temporary and fake emails. It's been a problem for a lot of businesses and websites that require legitimate email addresses to prevent spam and maintain accurate user data, so I thought I would tackle this issue.

My API uses machine learning to detect fake or temporary emails and prevent them from being registered or used on your website or app. It's a simple solution to a common problem, and I think it could be really useful for startups, small businesses, and anyone else who wants to protect their online platform from spammers and bots.

I'd love to get your feedback on the API and hear your thoughts on how it could be improved or expanded. Are there any features or integrations you would like to see added? Is there anything that doesn't work as well as you'd like it to?

Thank you to everyone who has already given feedback :))

You can test by entering the email address you want to test instead of [email protected] in the link below.

https://api.blocktempmail.com/[email protected]?token=indiehackers

  1. 3

    I tried your API and I think it looks and works well.

    However, I think I may have news for you that you don't want to hear: You may have built a product that no one really wants.

    The reason why I say this, is because I built basically this same product about five years ago.

    I started with API only and got very little interest. Then I invested more and added a web based UI. Still very little interest. I kept adding features, such as temporary email address detection. Role account detection (of multiple languages - which is not as trivial as it sounds), profanity detection and so on. A lot of features and they all worked pretty darn well, even if I say so myself. I was even using AI, which was not a thing back then.

    I gave it my best, but I failed, and I'm fairly sure that I failed because there was simply no demand.

    My post-failure analysis based on everything I learned from building this SaaS that failed is that:

    Website owners don't really care about fake data.

    In fact, they have incentives to say that do, but the real incentive is the exact opposite: a website owner has the incentive to say they have more users than they do. That's why year after year, every social media is full of bots.

    Fake users and bots count as registered users and/or active users and high users numbers is exactly what website owners want. That's why they don't want to really tackle the problem of fake users. They can say that they do, but they really don't.

    Another issue that I encountered when I ran SaaS like this was that the little demand that I saw, most of it came from shady people. Basically, scammers and spammers who have a massive mailing list that they have scraped somehow and they use to send spam, they want to validate it to remove bad email addresses. And then the question becomes, how comfortable are you in providing services for scammers? I wasn't comfortable with that, so that was also one reason why I decided to pull the plug on this.

    And lastly, to add a cherry to the top of the poop sandwich, there is the question of trust.

    You are basically asking people to share their customer or lead data with you. How would they know that you don't abuse this data by collecting every email that you verify and then sell them to scammers? In fact, my fairly educated guess is that many current websites that offer email validation, are simply data harvesting operations. They want you to upload your mailing list to them, so they can then later start to send spam to these people.

    It's not even just a question of trust, it's also a question of law. Many states have laws like GDPR, which can make it illegal for companies to send their lead data to you to validate.

    So, while I think this API looks great, I have a bad feeling about the future of this.

    I wish you the best of luck, nevertheless.

    1. 3

      I can tell you in b2b saas, this would sell well, we employ marketing ops people that basically have to clean the database once a month from spam accounts.

    2. 3

      Hey @jv16, thank you for trying my API and for sharing your thoughts on the demand for this type of product. I appreciate your honest feedback and your experience with building a similar product in the past.

      While I understand your concerns about the demand for a product that blocks temporary and fake emails, I have seen significant interest from businesses and websites that are struggling to maintain accurate user data and prevent spam. In my experience, fake user data can be a significant problem for companies, and it can negatively impact their user experience, marketing efforts, and revenue.

      My API uses machine learning algorithms to detect fake or temporary emails with a high level of accuracy, and I have received positive feedback from my early adopters. I believe that my product can help businesses improve their user data quality and reduce the impact of spam on their online platforms.

      I will continue to monitor the market and adapt my product to meet the changing needs of my customers. Thank you for your well wishes, and I appreciate your feedback :))

      1. 1

        Honestly, the stuff @jv16 is talking about is still around, even if you have a sick machine learning algorithm. But when it comes to the business side of things, you still gotta deal with these problems:

        • Websites don't really give a damn about fake data, even if they say they do.
        • There are trust issues with email validation services, and some may be data harvesting operations.

        I have tested the API looks like it failed to validate the domains that point their mx record to well-known domains.
        And also, what's the false positive rate?

        1. 1

          I understand the concerns raised by @jv16 and @JackL424. However, I strongly believe that there is a real need for a reliable and accurate solution to combat the problem of fake and temporary email addresses. While I acknowledge that no system can be 100% perfect, I am confident in the effectiveness and precision of my API.

          Privacy and security are of utmost importance to me, and I can assure you that I do not collect or sell user data. I have taken all necessary measures to ensure that our API complies with GDPR and other data protection regulations.

          Through extensive testing and continuous improvement of our machine learning model, we have achieved high precision and recall rates in detecting fake and temporary email addresses. While there may be other email validation services available, I believe that our API provides the most accurate and reliable solution.

          Regarding domain validation and false positive rates, and I am committed to addressing these issues as best as we can. Our main goal is to prevent as much spam as possible from being registered or used on websites and apps while maintaining the accuracy and quality of user data.

          I appreciate all feedback and suggestions for improvement and am constantly striving to enhance the performance of my API.

          Thank you for your interest

    3. 1

      This really depends on the business model. Social media platforms definitely want more of everything, bots included. Two sided marketplaces like eBay or Airbnb however do not want fake users scamming people, doing chargebacks, trying to break the system etc.

      I am a VP of Business Operations for a two sided marketplace for the last 5 years and I can tell you that when I first started we had 0 issues with this. Then COVID came and sometime in 2021 the amount of scam attempts skyrocketed and it's not slowing down, in fact I see more of in now than ever. We had to employ people just to combat this issue, which justifies the cost of many tools if the work (or parts of it) can be automated.

      I will definitely forward the API to my devs for testing, there's definitely a market for this product, you just need to identify who's at a loss for having fake users. My experience is that every marketplace suffers from this and you have a P2P or B2B marketplace for everything nowadays 😊

      1. 1

        Hi @Lakikentaki89, thanks a lot for your comment. I'm really excited about the potential of my API to help businesses tackle the issue of fake and temporary emails. It's true that the need for this kind of solution can vary depending on the industry and business model, so I appreciate your insight based on your experience with two-sided marketplaces.

        I'll definitely take your feedback into account and would love to hear any other suggestions or improvements you might have if you decide to test out the API. Thanks again for your comment, it's great to hear that there's a potential market for this product :)

    4. 1

      The biggest catch is what you mentioned last, it would be illegal for my Dutch business (subject to GDPR) to send you my user's email addresses.
      Maybe there is a way around this though: Send only the part before the @, or only the part after it. That way you are not processing real email addresses but you may be able to get pretty close.
      Just my 0.02

      1. 2

        Hey @CasHendrix, thank you for your comment and suggestion :) I have worked with great care to ensure that my API is GDPR compliant as I develop it. The domain query you mentioned is already included in my API, but I have not made it publicly available yet. When I release my API, users will be able to query through the domain, but fake emails may not be detected during the domain query process.

        1. 1

          Grear that you are taking it into account! I suppose it will be a balance.

  2. 2

    Great job on creating an API that addresses the issue of temporary and fake emails! It's definitely a common problem that many websites and businesses face, and your solution using machine learning to detect and prevent them is impressive. It's great to see how your API can help startups, small businesses, and anyone else who wants to protect their online platform from spammers and bots. I appreciate your willingness to receive feedback and improve your product. It would be interesting to know more about the accuracy of the machine learning algorithm and how it compares to other solutions in the market. Additionally, it would be helpful to have more information on how your API can be integrated with existing websites and platforms like this one https://apkcounty.com/z-shelter-survival-mod-apk/ . Keep up the good work!

    1. 2

      Thank you for your kind words and valuable feedback. My machine learning algorithm has a high level of accuracy in detecting temporary and fake emails and I continuously strive to improve it further. I'm currently working on publishing API documentation and SDKs, which will make it easy for my API to be integrated into existing websites and platforms :)

      1. 1

        SKD's are deff important! Devs want to simply install it, call a function and move on.
        Do let me know if you ever want to create an opensource PHP / Laravel SKD (composer package) since I have some experience in that space.
        Cool work!

  3. 2

    Awesome, thank you for sharing that!

    1. 1

      Thank you for your valuable comment :)

      1. 2

        Just tried it out! works pretty good!

  4. 2

    Very cool. I am building a service where we absolutely need our customers to be giving real emails.

    1. 1

      Hi @wuliwong,
      If you are still looking for an alternative, please check out this API service:
      https://rapidapi.com/nitinksaas/api/real-time-email-verification-api1

      Along with disposable or fake temporary email addresses, it also checks if the submitted email address exists or not using DNS records and SMTP checks.
      Let me know if you have some honest feedback for me. :)

    2. 1

      I'm so glad that my API is helpful for your service. Ensuring that customers provide real email addresses is crucial for any online business and I'm happy to hear that my API can assist you in achieving this. Thanks again ♥

  5. 2

    Its looks cool and every one agree that fake emails are not good for any business and most of the business facing this issue.

    1. 1

      Thank you for your positive feedback :))

  6. 2

    What is the difference between your product and the one offered for free by debounce?

    1. 2

      If you compare debounce with my api, you can see that there are clear differences. Thanks to the regression model I developed, it detects and returns fake and temporary e-mail addresses better than debounce. You can test it yourself if you want. Thanks for comment :))

      1. 2

        ohh I see... I'll definitely use your API on my prod env once you start charging ;)

        1. 1

          Hi @BrunoBologna,
          If you are still looking for an alternative, please check out this API service:
          https://rapidapi.com/nitinksaas/api/real-time-email-verification-api1

          Along with disposable or fake temporary email addresses, it also checks if the submitted email address exists or not using DNS records and SMTP checks.
          Let me know if you have some honest feedback for me. :)

        2. 1

          Thanks @BrunoBologna I'm so glad to hear that ♥

  7. 2

    @erdibgr, you are absolutely right. Every business wishes to have a correct user database, but some people use temporary email addresses because they just visit the site to test and fly and never land to use the tool.

    We have also faced the same issue with our product, Churnfree, in the past. I will share this with the developers!

    Thank you for sharing this.

    1. 1

      Hello @buckyjames, thank you very much for your valuable comment and support Do you think I would be successful if I offer this API as a SaaS service? I am very curious about the ideas of a product marketing manager.

      Thank you in advance :))

      1. 1

        Yes, it is possible because you are solving the problem that most businesses are currently facing.

        1. 1

          Thank you very much. My motivation increased :))

  8. 2

    Thank you for your valuable knowledge. It also helps me on my site.

    1. 1

      You're welcome, have a great day at work :))

  9. 2

    Thank you it will help me run my https://rizonclub.com/

    1. 1

      Hey thanks, have you tested the Api? :))

  10. 2

    A good service. Can be helpful for quick development as developers can focus on their product.

    1. 2

      Hello, thank you for your valuable comment :))

  11. 2

    Looks great! I'm wondering if it will be a paid service. If so, do you have any information on pricing or subscription plans?

    1. 1

      Hi @stephenasuncion,
      If you are still looking for an alternative, please check out this API service:
      https://rapidapi.com/nitinksaas/api/real-time-email-verification-api1

      Along with disposable or fake temporary email addresses, it also checks if the submitted email address exists or not using DNS records and SMTP checks.
      Let me know if you have some honest feedback for me. :)

    2. 1

      Thank you so much for your interest, I'll have both paid and free options available so that everyone can use it. I'm still working on pricing and subscription plans, but I promise to offer fair and competitive rates. I'll share more details soon, so stay tuned for updates :))

  12. 1

    this concept is very hard to understand

    1. 1

      Hello, what exactly did you not understand?

  13. 1

    this is Awesome, thanks for shearing..

    1. 1

      Great to hear you like it :)

  14. 1

    Please consider implementing a fix,

    tempmail dot lol

    1. 1

      Hi thanks. Our dataset is growing every day. Thank you for your support ♥

  15. 1

    Awesome idea! But why not have users verify their email as part of the signup process instead (ie send a one-time password or verification link to their inbox)? Or use a social login like Google or GitHub which has already verified the user? I plan to use a OTP during signup but wondering if there's a better way. Thanks and good luck!

    1. 1

      Thank you for your valuable feedback :) While verifying email addresses through a one-time password or verification link is a good practice, it may not be a practical solution for preventing bot signups with temporary emails during the registration process. My API provides an alternative solution for businesses and websites to proactively block temporary and fake emails, which is especially useful for companies that may not have access to Github or Google accounts. Additionally, some users may be hesitant to share their phone number for OTP verification, which could discourage them from signing up. Therefore, I believe that my API can be a convenient and effective way to ensure the legitimacy of email addresses without requiring additional steps from users. I appreciate your interest in my API and will continue to work on improving it

  16. 1

    Hello!
    This is very useful!

    I have tried with mailinator and it returned 200, i don't know if it should be return as 200 or 400 as your example.

    https://api.blocktempmail.com/[email protected]?token=indiehackers

    1. 1

      Hi @ronaldohoch,
      If you are still looking for an alternative, please check out this API service:
      https://rapidapi.com/nitinksaas/api/real-time-email-verification-api1

      Along with disposable or fake temporary email addresses, it also checks if the submitted email address exists or not using DNS records and SMTP checks.
      Let me know if you have some honest feedback for me. :)

    2. 1

      Hello, if you check the tempmail result returned from Api, you can check whether the mail is a temporary mail 🙂

      1. 1

        Yeah, but what about to always throw an error when e-mail is a tempmail?

        1. 2

          I originally planned to follow your initial suggestion, but then I considered that the person using the API may also want to process other types of data. As for why I returned a status code of 200 instead of 400, it's because temporary email addresses can still receive emails. Therefore, the API returns a 200 status code instead of 400

  17. 1

    What about captchas? Or temporary emails?

    1. 2

      Hey @kd1996, thank you for your question. Yes, my API is able to detect and block temporary and fake emails using machine learning algorithms. Captchas can be an additional security measure, but I believe my API offers a more seamless and user-friendly solution for preventing spam and maintaining accurate user data. Have you had a chance to test my API yet? I would love to hear your feedback if you have any :))

      1. 1

        I would agree, this could be a much better UX than captchas. Captchas also often fail if the user has higher privacy protections via extensions or better browsers than Chrome. Sniffing the email address quality would circumvent this issue.

  18. 1

    This is a great effort! Would you come out with another similar API like detecting role-based email address too? I came across that MailboxValidator has such feature but they only available in online demo but not API.

    1. 1

      Dear @camimimorales, thank you for your valuable comment and suggestion. I appreciate your interest in our API and I'm glad to hear that you found it useful. I'm constantly working on improving our API and I'm happy to inform you that detecting role-based email addresses is already on our to-do list for the next version. Thank you again for your feedback and please to contact me if you have any further questions or suggestions :))

  19. 1

    How does it validate the email addresses? Does it validate mailservers or look at other api's? I am curious because I believe some Amazon/cloud based mail relays might end up being marked as spam

    1. 1

      This API is based on the regression model I developed myself. This regression model processes a number of email records and infers whether an email address is fake or temporary. In this way, the accuracy rate of Api is higher than other email verification services. Thanks for comments :))

      1. 1

        Sounds like a nice solution. I would like to try it out.

  20. 1

    Good idea to look for the mail servers. However, some temporary email providers have thought off this it seems

    I tested
    [email protected] generated by temp-mail.org and is not filtered out.

    Probably you know that hubspot has a downloadable list of temporary email addresses ?

    https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/what-domains-are-blocked-when-using-the-forms-email-domains-to-block-feature

    Good luck

    1. 1

      Hey @ToPe this system does not just scan mail servers. The regression model I developed makes an inference by processing some mail records. In this way, the accuracy rate is higher than other email verification services. Thanks for your comment :))

    1. 1

      Great to hear that thanks ♥

  21. 1

    Really good job. Will definitely add it to my todo list. Keep it up with the good work Erdi :)

    1. 1

      Hey @sergiuchiriac thank you for your valuable comment :))

    1. 1

      Great to hear that thanks ♥

  22. 1

    Amazing idea, Im making a SaaS for a couple months now and I will definitely put this on my roadmap.

    1. 1

      Hi @jaocfilho,
      If you are still looking for an alternative, please check out this API service:
      https://rapidapi.com/nitinksaas/api/real-time-email-verification-api1

      Along with disposable or fake temporary email addresses, it also checks if the submitted email address exists or not using DNS records and SMTP checks.
      Let me know if you have some honest feedback for me. :)

    2. 1

      Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm thrilled to hear that you find my API useful and plan to include it in your SaaS roadmap :))
      Thanks again for your support, and best of luck with your SaaS ♥

  23. 1

    I have been offering such an API myself as well for the last few months. You can use it for free at https://rapidapi.com/jibr/api/disposable-email-validation/pricing requests average latency is 52ms.

    But as with all projects - it's about the marketing that would make it successful. Didn't manage to get any paid customers for this myself yet.

    Hope you will have more success than me with it!

    1. 1

      Heyy @paulNL, it's really great to see someone who has developed the same type of project. Thank you very much for your good wishes. If you compare your api with my api, what do you think is the difference between them? :))

  24. 1

    OMG been looking for this to filter out bad applicants for founders cafe

    1. 1

      Great to hear that you find my API useful for filtering out bad applicants for Founders Cafe. I wish you good work :))

  25. 1

    Some indiehackers create tempemail projects.
    Other indiehackers create a systems & tools to stop those temp emails being used.
    IMHO this is useless unless big esp (email service providers) e.g. convertkit, mailchimp and etc will add this api functionality to their systems.

    1. 1

      You are correct in this regard. From a business perspective, you would also not want someone to visit your site, sign up and never return. It's important to plan a remarketing marketing strategy and most businesses do this based on previous records!

      If you have high % of fake emails then your whole strategy, time and money will not give you a correct results.

    2. 1

      Currently, it works in integration with services like Mailchimp thanks to the interface I have been working on. As it is an API that returns data in JSON format, it can be easily integrated and used in all desired projects. Thank you for your feedback :))

      1. 2

        exactly, this is awesome feature for devs

  26. 1

    This is good, but it seems a bit slow. Do you have cached domain names or is it a real-time query?

    1. 1

      Hey @LouisY there is no cached data. Instant query is in progress. Therefore, the API may respond with some delay :))

      1. 1

        For temporary email providers, using cached domains may be a good solution, perhaps.

        1. 1

          Thank you for your idea. I also considered implementing caching, but I found that performing real-time data checks provides cleaner and higher quality results. But who knows, maybe in the future, I could cache and process the data :))

  27. 1

    It's good but you know there are a lot of temp mail services and they use multiple domains so you have to update this API every week. Good luck!

    1. 2

      Heyy, thank you for your valuable comment. This API is backed by a powerful regression model and bots that run every hour, which allows us to stay up to date with the latest temp mail services and their multiple domains. This gives us an edge over our competitors and ensures that we can provide accurate and reliable results. Thank you again for your feedback :))

      1. 1

        Kind of interesting. Will give it a try.

        1. 1

          Waiting for your valuable comments after trying it :))

  28. 1

    Hey, aren't there a ton of websites that already do this though? The use of this api is insance but why would I use your API over others?

    1. 1

      Yes, there are indeed several services available in the market, but I must clarify that there are only a handful of reliable and high-quality ones. I can confidently say that my API is one of the best options out there, and if you were to compare it to the other few services available, you would see that mine performs significantly better. I have put in a lot of effort and resources into developing this API, and it is designed to deliver accurate and consistent results to meet the needs of my clients. So, if you are looking for an API that can provide you with top-notch results, I highly recommend trying mine out. Thanks for comments :))

  29. 1

    The thing is I can't even get emails from professionals for Collaboration. There are lots and lots of websites that are constantly evolving depending on the API so We should figure out a way to get out of this crap.

    1. 1

      Thank you so much, your input is greatly appreciated. My API was designed to help users protect themselves from fake and temporary emails, which have been a persistent issue for many businesses and websites that rely on accurate user data to prevent spam and maintain credibility. By utilizing machine learning to detect and block these emails, my API provides a simple and effective solution to a common problem. I truly believe that this API could be incredibly useful for startups, small businesses, and anyone else who wants to safeguard their online platform against spammers and bots. I'll definitely take all feedback into consideration as I continue to develop and expand the API's capabilities and integrations :))

  30. 1

    I'm getting 400 returned

    1. 1

      Hello, actually it's not an error. If you replace '[email protected]' with the email address you want to test in the link I shared, you can test the API :)

      1. 1

        Oh I see! I didn't actually read the message I just assumed somehthing had gone wrong as soon as I saw 400. Cool idea!

        Maybe you could add a simple h1/ui version with instructions for those of us who skim read messages sometimes 🤣

        1. 2

          Haha Thank you for your comment 😄 I'm currently in the development stage, and I plan to add an ui and a token generation area soon :))

  31. 1

    Sounds like a cool service! The test link doesn't seem to work though - I end up getting a 401 error. Hopefully you can fix it; I'd love to see what you made.

    1. 1

      Hello, thank you for your valuable comment. Can you check the api again? :)

      1. 1

        hi @erdibgr, it seems you have to leave ?token=indiehackers on the end. I guess once the landing page no longer says coming soon maybe you will add a way to get API Key/ OAuth credentials.

        I'm currently using https://quickemailverification.com as it seems to have been the only affordable one since I last checked.

        1. 1

          Hey @Sewellstephens, I am currently developing a user interface for an API that will allow users to view statistics, customize their experience, and generate tokens. This API will be affordable for all budgets, ensuring accessibility for everyone. I will be sharing more about it soon and will post updates on IndieHackers. Thank you for your interest :))

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  32. 0

    seems like its gone now!

    If anyone is facing similar issues, I would suggest use this API: bouncebadger.com. Do check it out once! :)

  33. 0

    Good one and as mentioned in one of the comments, I did find similar services a lot in the past.

    1. 1

      Hey @kodytools, If you compare this API with other services, you can see the obvious difference. Thanks for comment :)

  34. 0

    I can solve this with out the API. I will just make a list of banned domain names.

    I will not allow any registration from email that has banned domain names.

    1. 2

      This service helps developers focus on their product and not worry about updating the blocked domain list.

    2. 2

      Yes you can do something primitive :)) This system is not just domain control. It can also detect fake and temporary gmail addresses. Thanks for comment

      1. 0

        How does it deduct fake and temporary gmail address? How much of it will be a false negatives?

        People can easily create a legitimate looking gmail address which isn't their primary daily use email address.

        1. 1

          There are various techniques and algorithms used to detect fake and temporary email addresses, including checking for suspicious patterns, analyzing the email domain, and verifying the email through additional means. While no system is perfect, this API aims to minimize the presence of fake and temporary email addresses to prevent spam and fake user registrations. By comparing it with other email verification APIs, you can see the clear difference and benefits it provides

  35. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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