Cleaning up a user DB for spam sign-ups

abytecurious

I need to clean up a User DB and remove users who are likely spam bots. Is there a way to query email addresses against a list (am okay to download it to a local DB and perform my lookup)?

The closest I came to was the Spamhaus CBL list, but it appears to be a online query one domain at a time.

Thanks!

SGraf

So the plan is to transmit potential personal identifiable information from users to a third party?
Sounds like a privacy nightmare with potential implications from regulations such as GDPR.

abytecurious

I need to clean up the user DB. I was looking for a copy of email addresses that could potentially be a spam bots email address. I am not downloading any data from my user DB. I could run a SQL query using my DB against a spammer list (which is what I was looking to download).

Kassem

Just thinking out loud, what if you ask the users to opt in your list? Keep people who answer and explicitly click yes agree to still receive emails from you and then you can discard the rest of the emails.

alexvolk

Ramesh Vish anything else you'd like to do us your job?

If you're doing this as part of JOB don't be a dick and do it. Why you're asking so simple questions? If you don't know how to clean up then why you took that job offering?

Anyways, answering your question there are services such as stopforumspam, cleantalk and etc. which provide API (see this is an API?) to query for spam behavior based on IP address, email, and any other info.

abytecurious

@alexvolk So in all your years of experience, you have never looked to the internet or asked a question to someone on a forum. I didn't know I was in the company of a certified genius.

I am not a anti spam expert and I never have claimed to be one. This is something I am not charging anyone for. So I would appreciate you stopping with your observations and name calling.

Thank you for the suggestions. The stopforumspam site looks really great.