'Admin Find Users' page fails, when searching on a domain for disposable email addresses

Question

The moderator tool 'Admin Find Users' seems to be failing for some specific queries.

To reproduce (if you're a diamond-moderator): go to the page and enter a query like "mailinator.com". I get an error page, "Oops! Something Bad Happened!". For most search terms, the page works fine, but for some specific queries, it errors out. The only pattern I can see in the queries that cause an error is that they all seem to be domain names for creating disposable email addresses. In particular:

• Searching on "mailinato" (or any prefix of "mailinato"): succeeds
• "ailinator": succeeds
• "mailinator": fails
• "mailinator2": succeeds
• "gmail", "gmail.com", "hotmail", etc.: succeeds

I found one or two examples of other domains for disposable email addresses with similar behavior as "mailinator"; I won't list them here, to avoid making abuse any easier than it needs to be.

It would be useful to search for all accounts that use one of these disposable-email domains (especially the more obscure ones, rather than mailinator), as it can be helpful in detecting some specific patterns of behavior.

Answer 1

I looked into it, made it a bit faster, most of the failing queries now work.

I've also made it return partial results on query timeouts. So whenever the query times out, chances are you'll get some results back from the cheaper query parts.

This went out in build rev 2016.11.18.5251 on MSE/MSO, 2016.11.18.4210 on sites.