Another suggestion: put something like libphonenumber’s isPossibleNumber or isValidNumber on your server, on error run the query string through it. If it says that looks like a phone number, relay this information in the error response. A field in the JSON response like “info: Your query parameter looks like a phone number. If you are trying to get the geographical location of a phone from the phone number, please be aware this is not possible. [link to blogpost]” would hopefully jump out at people, particularly if you ask them to include the error response in their support request.
It’s an unprincipled hack, a bizarre dependency to add to your project, it probably feels like admitting defeat to the all powerful AI… but it does 90%-solve the problem.
yeah I think maybe the way to solve this is to add some kind of API documentation that explicitly mentions that phone lookups aren't possible. ChatGPT will parse it eventually...
It’s an unprincipled hack, a bizarre dependency to add to your project, it probably feels like admitting defeat to the all powerful AI… but it does 90%-solve the problem.