How to Block Disposable Email Addresses
Introduction
Disposable Email Addresses (DEAs) can pose several challenges to communities and business platforms. Since users can create multiple addresses without any limit they often bypass or exploit incentives like free trials or rewards. Moreover, businesses can not reliably communicate with such users as DEAs expire quickly making customer engagement challenging. Similarly, such addresses inflate numbers like sign-ups or user activity which leads to misleading metrics harming decision-making.
What is a Disposable Email Address
Unlike a permanent email address, a Disposable address is a temporary address that is discarded after a specific purpose when no longer needed. The disposal does not affect contacts and messages. These email addresses add a layer of privacy as people do not want to reveal their actual email addresses.
Ways to Block Disposable Email Addresses
Biometric data is sensitive and valuable, and its misuse can lead to serious consequences, including identity theft and privacy invasion.
Using Disposable Email Detection Service
These services provide solutions to identify and block temporary email addresses by maintaining extensive and regularly updated databases of domains. When these services are integrated into platform the process of validating email addresses is streamlined.
Eamil List Verify
Kickbox
Mailgun
Operation through API
These are operated through APIs that can be integrated into websites, mobile apps and CRM systems. The API checks the domains of submitted emails against list of disposable providers and the matched email can be rejected and flagged.
Maintain A Blocklist
To prevent spam and ensure the quality of email addresses, maintain a blocklist of disposable emails. Such emails often used specific domains provided and publicly documented by the community-driven platform.
Steps to Implement: Start by sourcing a reliable list of disposable domains. These are available in JSON or plain text formats. Use the list during user registration or form submissions. The script extracts the domain and compares it against the blocklist. The method is easy and scalable for businesses of all sizes.
Email Syntax and MX Validation
These are essential steps in ensuring that the email address is valid and capable of receiving messages. These methods help filter out disposable addresses during form submissions.
MX Validation: Mail exchange Validation determines whether the domain of an address is configured to handle mail by querying the DNS. If the record exists, the domain is likely valid.
Syntax Validation: This includes structure verification of email address to check if it complies with the standard email format. This involves checking for a valid username, a valid domain name, and the absence of prohibited characters or sequences. This validation can be performed using regular expressions in programming languages.
Captcha Challenge
The are Completely Automated Public Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. These challenges are an effective method to deter bots including the use of disposable email addresses. Bots often use such emails to create fraudulent accounts. Captcha challenge during registration introduces an additional layer of security to separate automated scripts from humans.
CAPTCHA Tasks: Modern Captcha system presents tasks that are easy for humans, such as selecting images or solving puzzles. Advanced systems use behavioral analysis to assess user interactions offering frictionless verification for legitimate users. CAPTCHA significantly reduces the success rate of bots and prevents the integrity of the platform.
Regex Filters
Regular Expression, called Regex, is used to identify and block disposable email addresses allowing users to define patterns that match specific domains. These patterns can be used to validate user inputs.
Require Email Verification
The process involves sending a verification email to the provided user’s address containing a link or code. The user must click the link or enter the code for verification.
Impracticality: As these codes expire quickly, they make it impractical for disposable email addresses to complete the verification process. Moreover, user communication and reliability are also improved. Confirmed email addresses ensure that your platform can easily communicate with you. Invalid and unreachable accounts are reduced in your system improving data quality.
