Block Fake Disposable Email Addresses

If you run a website that allows account signups, you’ve probably faced abuse from fake users, abusive users, fraudsters, and other malicious actors. If you look at their email addresses, you may have noticed a pattern among these users. Fake users tend to use disposable emails and temporary email services that allow abusers to quickly cycle through new emails with unique address names across thousands of domains. These services make it possible with a simple mouse click to generate a brand new email address.

Since the creation of T.LY URL Shortener, I’ve had to learn a ton about how to stop malicious users on the internet. One part of this was preventing users from signing up using disposable email addresses. Fortunately, there is a Laravel package that handles this functionality. I got a quick solution released that auto-updated from an ever-growing list of fake email address domains. Read More

Twitter Bot

For my new quote site, AtomicQuote, I wanted to add the ability for the site to auto-tweet the most popular quotes throughout the day. I ran into a few issues and wanted to write this post to hopefully help others who want to create an auto tweeting Twitter bot.

Twitter API

The first task was to sign up for a Twitter API account and check their documentation. Make sure you use the account your want to tweet from when you generate your keys. You will need a Key, Secret Key, Token, and Token Secret. Read More