Sept. 11, 2024
How can phone verification make your business a solid wall against fraud?
Nowadays, companies are at higher and higher risk of being the target of identity theft and fraud, putting the organization itself in harm's way and jeopardizing the company's good name. Without proper phone verification in place, a company can be vulnerable to hacking, financial loss, and even irreparable damage to its reputation. We'll explore how to verify a phone number in order to protect customer identities, make communications efficient, and operations unassailable. We will review various verification methods, examine the dangers of not verifying and the direct benefits to you of having set up a strong authentication process.
Phone verification is key to keeping your business safe and not sketchy these days. Confirming that someone is the person they say they are is a huge way to keep your accounts safe and operations running smoothly. Everything is online now and people are buying from the internet more and more, especially in e-commerce, so you need to make sure that your customers are really who they say they are.
Real phone verification helps businesses make sure that the person using their service is really who they say they are, and that's crucial for security. Whenever someone creates a new account on a website or in an app, verifying their phone number is a key way to authenticate their identity. A verified phone number is kind of like two-factor authentication—it's an additional layer of security that makes it even more difficult for someone with stolen or synthetic credentials to create an account.
That's important not just to protect customer details, but also to know that transactions are legitimate. Imagine a shopper attempting to place a very large order on an eCommerce site; having their phone number on their account verified as a real phone number adds an extra level of confidence that everything is legitimate. In industries that face high rates of fraud, leveraging real phone verification can help businesses to gain customer trust and repeat business by providing a safe space for people to shop.
Phone verification systems are one of the most effective tools for preventing fraud. They basically add an extra layer of checking to make sure that the person signing up or logging in to your service actually owns the phone number they're using. Because most fraudsters like to cut corners and take shortcuts when they cheat verification processes, you'll be able to identify the majority of fraud at this stage when you cross-reference their phone number with your verified database and stop them from doing anything suspicious at scale.
Here's a good analogy: a fraudster has access to stolen credit card information and they try to use it to create a fake account. If you're using a real phone verification system, the system won't be able to verify the phone number of the stolen identity, and the fraudster won't be able to make a fraudulent purchase. This highly effective tool doesn't just protect the company, it protects the wallets of legitimate customers.
Don't make up numbers. Only include a number in your output if one is provided in the original text.
In e-commerce, timing is everything and one mismatch can 100% kill your business. Verified phone numbers are a game-changer because you can confirm details with your customer before they order, and confirm details with your customer after they've ordered. When a customer places an order, a verified phone number guarantees you can reach out to them and confirm details, and ensure there's no confusion that would upset your customer.
You can also communicate with your customer about shipping quickly, so they know when to expect it, resulting in fewer misdeliveries and a better customer experience overall. If a driver can't find someone's house, being able to reach that person directly with a verified phone number to clear up the issue ahead of time is a game changer.
Not verifying phone numbers can lead to fraud accounts and more chargebacks. Fraudsters know they can steal in a variety of ways and you can't stop them!
For example, in e-commerce, a business that doesn't verify phone numbers might see a huge spike in sales, then a lot of returns, because most of those sales were fraudulent. Those resources could have been put to work elsewhere. And the financial impact is much more than just the immediate loss of not being paid for goods. There's also the reputational cost; a business that's easy to defraud will have a very difficult time persuading customers to trust them, and that can have long-term implications for the bottom line. Additionally, using a reliable phone validation tool like Numverify ensures data accuracy crucial for e-commerce success, as it supports 232 countries worldwide.
Phone verification is a popular method for verifying new user accounts when they sign up for your app. People are required to enter a phone number when they sign up to confirm that it's really them. The phone number is a unique identifier and confirming it belongs to them is a key step in confirming their identity. When you send a verification code via SMS or voice call, you're confirming they have access to that number. This is important because, without verification, the number of spam accounts and people impersonating others could go through the roof!
More generally, our research and user feedback tell us that users like and expect phone verification! It increases trust in your app, which can lead to higher user retention. For example, a social app that verifies phone numbers at sign-up could expect to have fewer bot accounts and less spam overall, making for a better user experience.
Lots of online platforms require a mobile number to send an SMS and make sure you're really you. They still send you an SMS because hacking and data breaches still happen all the time, even in 2021. After you've entered your username and password, you'll be prompted for a one-time code sent to the mobile phone number on file for your account. After you key in the correct code, you're in.
It's much more secure. For instance, if someone happens to know your password, they still can't get into your account without that verification code sent to your mobile phone. That's why you see a lot of SMS verification for e-commerce, social media, digital banking and other platforms that deal with sensitive information. They're doing that so anyone who's allowed to access the software, just in a secure and user-friendly way.
Voice verification is another way for users to verify themselves in case they can't use SMS for any reason. Some parts of the world have bad SMS deliverability because of network issues. By also offering voice verification, you can make sure everyone can use your app, no matter where they are.
When a user chooses voice verification, they'll get an automated phone call to listen to a code. Voice verification is especially good for people with poor texting capability or poor SMS reception. Voice verification is also much more secure from phishing because you can't just text someone and get a code. In high-stakes situations like this (people's sensitive data), it's important to give people other ways to verify themselves.
Finance and banking institutions commonly use phone verification as part of the multi-factor authentication they require for their end users to access their services. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is when instead of just username and password, you have to provide a second piece of info to prove it's really you trying to get in. Phone verification is that second piece of info.
Basically, when you log into your bank's website, you'll get sent a code by SMS or phone call, which you then use to complete the login. This means that even if someone were to somehow steal and use your username and password, they still wouldn't be able to get in and help themselves to your money. It's a key driver of trust for people using financial services, and not without reason—the finance industry takes a very dim view of fraud, and phone verification is a key tool in mitigating risk in digital transactions.
Real phone verification is beneficial in customer support because you can verify who customers are before you help them. So when people call in for help, they verify their phone number, and you know they're really the account owner. This helps keep customer data safe and makes for ultra-fast support.
For example, a customer calls the support line to resolve an issue with their account. The support agent can ask the customer to verify the code that has been sent to their phone, and the customer's identity is verified. The agent is now free to resolve the issue. Businesses are able to assist customers more quickly while lessening the risk of social engineering.
Using a phone verification app for support really is a no-brainer for businesses because it's an easy way to increase security, build user trust, and run a smoother operation for just about any business.
In today's digital world, businesses of all types are confronted with a variety of challenges and threats. One of the most powerful, yet overlooked, user authentication methods is phone verification. Without it, you could be leaving your business vulnerable to increased identity theft, fraudulent accounts, and security breaches. You should be aware of those risks so that you can protect your business and users.
Without phone verification, companies are sitting ducks for identity theft and fake accounts. In a lot of cases, bad actors take advantage of no or poor verification and create a ton of fake profiles. These fake profiles can be used for bad things, such as stealing money, spamming, or spreading fake news. Doing a simple phone verification can eliminate 99% of that risk by confirming the person behind the profile is real. For example, if you make someone enter a one-time password (OTP) sent to their phone, you not only verify their identity, you also tie the profile to a real-world communication device, making it very hard for fraudsters to create fake accounts.
On top of that, good verification processes help companies maintain the integrity of their user data by ensuring every single user they have is who they say they are. Not only does this secure individual accounts, it also secures the overall brand reputation in the market. Companies that suffer from identity theft may find themselves in legal trouble, losing customer trust, and catastrophic financial repercussions.
Without a solid phone verification system in place, businesses are at risk of a whole bunch of potential security issues. If users aren't verified properly, anyone can use the user verification process to sneak into a business, and this can result in data breaches, in which case customers' private information is exposed.
When consumers hear about compromised businesses, they lose faith in them, and the business loses commerce. Customers expect their personal information to be kept for the company's eyes only, and once that trust is broken, it's challenging to regain, and nearly impossible to attract new customers. Businesses that go the extra mile to ensure customer security and fully verify users will keep customers longer because they can trust the company.
An unvalidated phone number database can have a big effect on data accuracy, which can send your marketing off the rails and slow down your operations. If a company uses bad data to contact customers or for analytics, then they're really going to mess up their analyses. For instance, if a marketing team is using a list of phone numbers where many of them are disconnected or just plain wrong, then the effort will be inefficient, and they'll miss opportunities to scale.
And if the contact database is dirty, then your analytics is just as watered down. If you're outbound marketing to the wrong demographics (because your data is wrong), then you won't see a good ROI. By validating phone numbers, you ensure that marketing teams work with a clean and accurate contact list in order to reach the right audience, realize true campaign performance, and optimize strategies.
Without real phone verification, fraud goes up. People can get into systems more often without phone verification, eating through a business' chargebacks and other finances. In other words, a business loses money when people buy things using stolen identities or stolen credit card information, and those are not only the direct financial cost but also other related costs like chargeback fees charged by the credit card company itself.
A lot of the time, if a business has a lot of fraud, they are penalized by the payment processor and end up paying more or losing the ability to accept payments at all. With real phone verification in place, you can save more money and keep your business at capacity, all of the time.
Having no phone verification system means your business is exposed to legal risk, and legal risk means legal action—and often very large lawsuits. Virtually every jurisdiction has strict data protection and privacy laws, and not abiding by them can be extremely costly. For example, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, businesses are obliged to protect the user data they hold and that includes reliably verifying user accounts.
Then of course there's the damage to your reputation. Companies are constantly told to respect the law and look after their customers, which is essentially what verifying user identities achieves. In achieving that, companies not only keep themselves out of trouble with the law, but they demonstrate to the world that they are a safe pair of hands with customer data.
Verifying user identities isn't just about good security, it's about good for your customer's trust, accurate data, and a million other things that we all want to keep our businesses safe from.
In today's online world, it's more important than ever to know who your users are. Real phone verification is one of the easiest ways to do this. It's easy to implement and a powerful tool available to you to ensure that your business is safe, that your users are real, and that no fraudulent users slip through the cracks. Scroll down to learn more about phone number verification, tips, and best practices.
Phone number verification is a handy tool. You basically send the user a code that's only going to the phone number they have associated with their account, to check that they have access to the number.
When a user requests verification, we generate a random code and send it to them by SMS. They enter it into a field on a website or in a mobile app, and if it matches what we generated, they're verified. The whole thing gives you an additional level of security and keeps people who shouldn't be in the account out.
And guess what? You can combine SMS verification with other security controls, like multi-factor authentication. This is where the user needs to know something (like a password), in addition to having the SMS code. This is just an additional layer, because even if a user's password is compromised, someone else would still need the user's phone to get in.
Voice call verification is essentially a second form of SMS verification, used to clearly confirm that a person is who they say they are. We make a call to the phone number provided, and ask the user a few specific questions which they need to respond to correctly. They might be prompted with an automated message to repeat a passcode, or answer a question related to their account. This secondary verification ensures that even if someone else has access to the phone's SMS, only the true user can correctly complete the specified tasks.
Voice call verification is especially powerful in use cases where extra security is needed, like completing a financial transaction, or making a sensitive account change. By adding complexity and requiring the user to use their voice, you can reduce the risk associated with identity theft and unauthorized actions.
For simple phone verifications, companies can use verification APIs such as Twilio's Verify API to easily add phone number verification to their mobile or web apps without needing to be a developer.
These APIs do the heavy lifting for you, such as handling sending the SMS or making the voice call, but let you have the data you need to understand what is happening with the verification. They provide real-time analytics so you can monitor verification status and user interaction easily. And they offer lots of features to customize verification flows so you can have the user experience that best suits your business.
Use verification APIs to let us handle verifications so you can focus on building your app's core functionality, confident that your verifications are always secure and delivered.
Verification isn't verification without verified best practices, which all relate to security and are the most important.
One best practice is to verify phone numbers when the user first signs up. When you verify at signup, you can delete the invalidated numbers as soon as the user signs up, and you'll be much more efficient in general whenever you do verification.
You also want multi-factor authentication (MFA) in addition to verification. MFA means that when you first sign in, you have to prove that you are who you say you are in multiple ways, so no one else can get in. You could enter an SMS code, match your fingerprint, and match your device, for instance.
Check in on and periodically update your verification procedure. You're collecting data from your verification systems all the time, and you can use this data to understand how people use your product and to safeguard against security threats. If you update your verification to combat new types of fraud, you'll always have a secure, strong system that's up to the task of defending the identities of the people who use your app.
Watching verification helps you catch and prevent any fraud. With analytics and reporting tools, you can observe user behavior during verification. This is awesome because you can see if users are attempting to game the system and commit fraud.
For example, if a certain phone number keeps failing verification, that phone number is probably a fraudulent phone number. And with a blacklist of phone numbers, you can identify and block fraudulent users rapidly.
By continually improving your verification flow and using analytics, you can stay ahead of fraud and combat sophisticated fraud while delivering a secure experience to users. Plus, with real-time watching and adaptive risk adjustment, you can establish trust, too -- and trust is the foundation for everything. Phone number validation can aid in identifying and blocking fraudulent users through global verification and risk scoring for phone numbers across over 150 countries.
User account security is top of mind these days, and a strong phone verification system can help make your security practices more robust, allowing you to verify that the person trying to access sensitive information or services is really who they claim to be. Here's how to do it in 15 easy steps on your own site.
You've chosen to add phone verification to your app! The next step is to select a trusted API. You have choices like Twilio and IPQualityScore. When you select an API, you'll want to keep your business priorities in mind. Do you need to scale? How easy is it to integrate? What will it cost you? Twilio has a lot of documentation and a pay-as-you-go model that makes it easy to get started no matter your size. IPQualityScore offers a lot of features related to fraud prevention and we also do phone verification. Once you've reviewed both contenders, compare and contrast their features and pricing and the helpfulness of their staff.
Once you've found the right API, the next step is to sign up for an account with the API provider. You'll need some important credentials along the way, such as API keys, which you'll use to connect the service to your application. Make sure to generate both public and secret keys, as you'll need both to authenticate your application with the API. Keep your credentials safe to ensure that only authorized users can connect to your application.
Once your API is set up, you'll need to write code that actually sends your app those verification messages. This might be a backend function that will trigger sending an SMS or voice call whenever a user attempts to register or log in. For example, you might make an endpoint that, when given a user's phone number, tells your API to send a one-time password (OTP). And you'll need to make sure that you fill in all of the variables in your logic to ensure that everything is templated and labeled correctly.
Next you'll need to write some code to get the user input of the verification codes they receive by SMS or voice call. You will need to create some kind of UI to ask the users to enter the received OTP, and ensure you are handling this input securely. And of course you'll also need to add some error handling for the most common issues, like what happens if the user enters the code incorrectly, or if the code has expired. For example, if a user enters the wrong code, you will need to write functionality so that they can request a new OTP, of course writing in rate limiting so that they can't spam you with requests.
Testing is a crucial part of the implementation process. You'll want to thoroughly test the verification system in different scenarios to make sure that it provides a smooth user experience. This will of course include testing for successful verifications, but you should also test the system's ability to handle wrong codes, and the fallback mechanism should the initial verification attempt fail. You'll also want to consider using tools that simulate different network conditions or load scenarios to ensure that your application will perform well under real phone verification conditions.
Finally, don't forget to measure the effectiveness of the verifications and listen to user feedback. You'll always be iterating on how you verify phone numbers with Twilio. Figure out what kind of problems users are experiencing when they try to verify their phone number. Also look at metrics to understand how many verifications are successful versus unsuccessful. These numbers will show you where you need to prioritize. With user feedback, fine-tune your implementation, and automate as much as possible so you can have both a good user experience and a reliable system.
Real phone verification is a key way to keep businesses safe these days -- it's an easy way to prevent identity theft and fraud, and make sure users are really who they say they are. When you verify phone numbers as part of the signup and login process, you can step up account security, keep in touch efficiently, and just generally keep everything moving smoothly, whether you're an e-commerce or any other kind of company. This post covers different ways to do it, like SMS verification, voice call verification, and verification APIs. And best practices like multi-factor authentication and ongoing monitoring, because fraud doesn't look the same every time. If you're not verifying, you're tempting fate -- with financial loss, customer confidence, and more. Bottom line: you definitely want real phone verification working in your flows.
Real phone verification is key for business to get real information about who your users are, which helps keep your accounts secure. It's like a type of 2-factor authentication that prevents people from logging in as you and doing crimes. By verifying phone numbers, you can build trust with your customers, reduce your risk of getting identity theft, and keep business businessy.
Phone verification is a key tool for preventing fraud. It verifies the person in possession of a phone number, so businesses can stop fraudulent accounts before they're even created. If someone tries to create an account with stolen credentials, the number won't verify and they won't be able to transact.
Both SMS and voice call verification are common ways to verify someone's identity. SMS verification sends a one-time code to a person's phone number. Voice call verification calls a person and asks them a few questions. On the whole, it improves security and accessibility (someone in a remote area in Africa might have phone network but not data, and vice versa for someone in San Francisco). All well and good.
If you don't phone verify, you're risking more identity theft, more fraudulent accounts on your platform. Which equals chargebacks (lost money), operational costs, and brand damage. Plus potential fines for not being compliant with data protection laws.
The most popular phone verification use cases include user registration to reduce fake accounts, SMS verification in login flows to increase security, and voice call verification so users without SMS can use your app. Banks use phone verification for multi-factor authentication, and you can verify the user before giving them sensitive account information for a better support experience.
Businesses can do this by selecting a quality verification API, creating accounts to obtain the correct credentials and coding that routes a text message or places a voice call. You'll have to be mindful of working with user input, spend significant time testing, and be open to feedback to keep improving it. And maybe most significantly of all, please use multi-factor authentication.
When it comes to phone verification, you'll want to verify phone numbers users enter into your system, ensure the strongest security, and keep an eye on the process for opportunities to improve. Continuously monitor verification success rates and user feedback, and make tweaks when and where needed.
Phone verification is an incredibly useful tool for communicating with customers because you get access to a customer's phone number and can actually contact them.
You can contact them to give them order confirmations, shipping updates, critical alerts, etc. You're probably catching on that a verified phone number is a huge step-up for customer experience because you can actually call and text them. This is important because the more you can contact your customer, the more secure they feel, and the better their experience, and the more loyal they are, and the more money they give you.
real phone verification: a smartphone displaying a verification code screen
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