The latest articles on DEV Community by flusnot (@flusnot). https://dev.to/flusnot https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3879991%2F38f9a204-5492-4ffd-98b6-a13e359f6b0d.png https://dev.to/flusnot en flusnot Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:51:10 +0000 https://dev.to/flusnot/i-built-a-fake-review-detector-api-because-i-got-tired-of-not-being-able-to-trust-product-reviews-3fhe https://dev.to/flusnot/i-built-a-fake-review-detector-api-because-i-got-tired-of-not-being-able-to-trust-product-reviews-3fhe <p>Fake reviews are everywhere. Anyone who's bought something online has probably been burned by them at some point — a product with 500 five star reviews that turns out to be garbage.</p> <p>I wanted a programmatic way to flag them so I built an API that does it.</p> <p>Send it any review text and it comes back with a fake score from 0-100, a verdict of genuine, suspicious, or likely fake, and up to three reasons why it flagged it.</p> <p>It catches things like overly enthusiastic language, disclosure of free products, vague non-specific praise, and other patterns that show up consistently in incentivized or fake reviews.</p> <p>Useful if you're building a marketplace, running a review platform, or just want to sanity check reviews before trusting them.</p> <p>Listed it on RapidAPI with a free tier if you want to try it: <a href="https://rapidapi.com/flusnot/api/fake-review-detector1" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://rapidapi.com/flusnot/api/fake-review-detector1</a></p> <p>Built it in a day. Happy to answer any questions.</p> api webdev javascript node flusnot Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:49:42 +0000 https://dev.to/flusnot/how-i-built-a-phone-number-reputation-api-in-a-weekend-and-listed-it-for-sale-5bpk https://dev.to/flusnot/how-i-built-a-phone-number-reputation-api-in-a-weekend-and-listed-it-for-sale-5bpk <p>I kept seeing the same problem come up in founder communities — fake signups, burner numbers abusing free trials, rewards programs getting farmed.</p> <p>Most solutions were either expensive enterprise tools or required way too much setup for a small team. So I spent a weekend building a simple API that does one thing: score a phone number's reputation.</p> <p>Send it any number and it comes back with whether it's real, what carrier it's on, if it's a VoIP or burner, and a recommendation to accept, review, or block it. Score is 0-100.</p> <p>Useful if you're dealing with free trial abuse, SMS verification bypass, or just want to validate leads before paying to contact them.</p> <p>Listed it on RapidAPI with a free tier if you want to try it: <br> <a href="https://rapidapi.com/flusnot/api/phone-reputation-scorer" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://rapidapi.com/flusnot/api/phone-reputation-scorer</a></p> <p>Took about a day to build. Happy to answer questions about how it works.</p> api javascript webdev node