NAME

Email::Address::Classify - Classify email addresses

SYNOPSIS

    use Email::Address::Classify;

    $email = Email::Address::Classify->new('a.johnson@example.com');

    print "Is valid:  " . $email->is_valid() ? "Y\n" : "N\n";    # Y
    print "Is random: " . $email->is_random() ? "Y\n" : "N\n";   # N

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a simple way to classify email addresses. At the moment, it only provides two classifications is_valid() and is_random(). More classifications may be added in the future.

METHODS

new($address)

Creates a new Email::Address::Classify object. The only argument is the email address.

is_valid()

Performs a simple check to determine if the address is formatted properly. Note that this method does not check if the domain exists or if the mailbox is valid. Nor is it a complete RFC 2822 validator. For that, you should use a module such as Email::Address.

If this method returns false, all other methods will return false as well.

is_random()

Returns true if the localpart is likely to be randomly generated, false otherwise. Note that randomness is subjective and depends on the user's locale and other factors. This method uses a list of common trigrams to determine if the localpart is random. The trigrams were generated from a corpus of 30,000 email messages, mostly in English. The accuracy of this method is about 95% for English email addresses.

If you would like to generate your own list of trigrams, you can use the included ngrams.pl script in the tools directory of the source repository.

TODO

Ideas for future classification methods:

    is_freemail()
    is_disposable()
    is_role_based()
    is_bounce()
    is_verp()
    is_srs()
    is_batv()
    is_sms_gateway()

AUTHOR

Kent Oyer <kent@mxguardian.net>

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2023 MXGuardian LLC

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the LICENSE file included with this distribution for more information.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.