Detecting Disposable and Temporary Emails at Signup
Disposable email domains — mailinator, 10-minute mail, and thousands like them — exist to create throwaway addresses. Let them through your signup form and you get fake trials, abuse, and marketing lists full of dead addresses. Detecting them at signup is a one-call fix.
Why disposables poison your funnel
A burner address clears your email confirmation, grabs a free trial, and evaporates. At scale this means inflated signup metrics, trial abuse, fraud, and a marketing database you can never actually reach. The cost isn't just noise — it's decisions made on fake data.
How detection works
Two approaches, best used together: curated blocklists of known disposable domains (there are ~100k and counting), and MX-pattern heuristics that catch new burner services sharing infrastructure. Because new disposable domains appear daily, the blocklist has to be continuously updated — a static list from six months ago misses the newest ones.
Gating signups in one call
Call a verification API when a user submits your signup form and gate on the isDisposable flag:
POST https://api.continuumapi.com/v1/verify
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
{ "email": "user@mailinator.com" }
// response
{ "status": "risky",
"checks": { "isDisposable": true },
"subStatus": "disposable" }Handling the result
Block the signup, ask for a work email, or flag the account for review — your call. The point is you decide with real data instead of discovering the problem when a campaign to those addresses bounces months later.
Frequently asked questions
How many disposable domains are there?
Around 100,000 known burner domains, with new ones appearing daily — which is why detection needs a continuously updated blocklist plus MX heuristics.
How do I block disposables at signup?
Call POST /v1/verify when the form is submitted and gate on the isDisposable flag in the response — block, request a work email, or flag for review.
Will detection block real users?
No — disposable detection targets known throwaway providers, not legitimate free mailboxes like Gmail or Outlook, which pass normally.