Developers looking to ward off spam from social media and email now have one more tool in their arsenal, thanks to new software from Ottawa-based Lionhardt Technologies.
Lionytics, an anti-spam application programming interface (API), allows developers to add anti-spam barriers to their code. Launched on July 1, it scans a company’s accounts on Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest, checking posts against a database of about 14 million blacklisted IP addresses that are known sources of spam.
Developers writing Lionytics into their code can then get data reports back in either JSON or XML format, making the data easy to incorporate into mobile or web apps. They can also use the API to encrypt or decrypt data, if necessary. Essentially, Lionytics gives developers control over what to do when a source of spam is found.
For example, Lionytics can scan for sources of phishing, but it’s up to developers to decide what to do once they find them, says Richard Eradus, CEO of Lionhardt.
“It will recognize if [a post is from] a known spammer … it could be anything from X-rated content to those annoying weight loss messages you keep getting, so it would take everything across the board and all the developer would have to do is pass, [for example], a Twitter handle and get it verified against Lionytics,” he says.
“If it’s in the database, it’ll come back to the developer and say, this person is a known spammer.”
And if a developer is concerned with spear phishing, he or she can scan a block of text and see if the text’s source is from a Web site containing links to known sources of malware.
However, while Lionytics does work with emails, Eradus says a lot of free email services like Gmail already have effective spam filters. But blocking spam via social media is still relatively uncharted terrain, he says. Corporations may find a capability to do so valuable, especially since the API could save developers a lot of time by telling them when spam is entering their networks.
Eradus says he expects Lionytics will be updated daily to catch new sources of spam, especially since so much changes online each day. Pricing starts at about $100 a month.