Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is a Web Service or API?
A. We better let Wikipedia answer this one: Web Service
Q. Why should I use WebPurify instead of writing my own filter?
A. Because we built one already, and our filter is better! You need to spend time building your app not developing a profanity filter. We have a dedicated team of developers whose number one goal is making the most accurate and efficient profanity filter. This is what we do and we do it well.
Q. Can I have/see your list of profanity?
A. Nope. WebPurify is more than a list. We have developed a system to detect profanity. A list of profane words would not fully represent all the variations our system captures. Detecting profanity is a lot more difficult than just comparing your text against a list of profane words.
Q. What forms of payment do you accept?
A. We accept payments via Google Checkout and PayPal.
Q. Do I need to give you my credit card info for a free trial?
A. Nope.
Q. How many licenses do I need?
A. You need 1 license per root domain or IP. A license for yoursite.com will work for www.yoursite.com and dev.yoursite.com
Q. How many submissions can I send to WebPurify?
A.
  • There is no limit to the number of queries you can send to WebPurify.
  • No matter how many requests you make, 10 queries or 1,000,000, you just pay the same low yearly fee.
Q. My application will make MANY requests to your service, can WebPurify handle it?
A.
  • Yes!
  • WebPurify is hosted in a cloud environment, which scales automatically to meet capacity.
  • This ensures that the response time of our service and yours never slows during periods of high traffic.
Q. Why make this a web service as opposed to just a library?
A.
  • WebPurify takes away the pain of having to maintain your own profanity database.
  • We are always working to increase the accuracy of WebPurify.
  • WebPurify is technology agnostic. No matter which language you code in, if you can make REST calls, you can use WebPurify.
  • As time goes on we will be releasing new features that you will be able to implement without installing new files.
Q. Can I have custom black and white lists?
A.
  • Yes!
  • Through our admin interface you can create custom white and black lists for each license key.
Q. How many characters can I post to WebPurify per submission?
A. Currently WebPurify accepts an unlimited number of characters. However, the larger the text submitted the longer it will take to return results.
Q. Does WebPurify work with languages other than English?
A. Yes, WebPurify supports English, Spanish and Arabic. We will be adding other languages soon. You may add any words from any language to your black lists.
Q. Do you offer a method that replaces profane words with other characters (i.e. "@#$!")?
A. Yes, documentation on this method can be found here: http://www.webpurify.com/webpurify.live.replace.php
Q. How do you handle words that may or may not be profane, depending on the usage? (i.e Vice President Dick Cheney)
A. While no profanity filter is 100% accurate, our system is designed to minimize "false positives". To date we have received a handful of false positive reports and our support team has reacted quickly. That's not bad considering we have had over 75,000,000 requests made to our service!
Q. Can I see how many queries I have submitted and how many have contained profanity?
A. Yes, you can see your stats by logging into your account.
Q. Why am I asked to enter in a domain name or IP when purchasing a license?
A. We require you enter the domain name or IP address that your requests to WebPurify will be coming from in order to ensure that our licenses keys are being used by paying customers.
Q. What if I don't have an domain name or IP address to enter at this time?
A. If you don't currently have a domain name or static IP address for your application, you may enter "localhost" into the domain/IP field. This will put you license on our "watch list".
Q. How do I change the domain name or IP associated with my license?
A. You can change the domain or IP associated with your license by logging into your WebPurify account, selecting the domain you wish to change, and then clicking on "change domain for this license". Once you submit your change it will take effect immediately.