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Reduced First-Party API Errors by 75.6% After Implementing Pre-Request Validation

While reviewing HTTP error logs for DentalPlans.com, I noticed a disproportionate number of 400 Bad Request responses originating from the marketing website’s calls to the Savings Calculator API. Many requests included clearly bogus values like “Snag your free gift” and “Claim your free Bitcoin,” indicating form-stuffing by bots targeting lead-generation forms.

I identified consistent patterns in these malformed requests and implemented robust pre-request validation to filter out bad actors before they ever reached the API service.

Following deployment, monitoring confirmed a complete elimination of these spammy inputs to the microservice, resulting in a 75.6% drop in overall 400 responses and improved API reliability.