How to verify a phone number?

Call back to verify automatically

[tntpower]

Hi folks,

I have a concern about verifying clients' phone numbers. I know it is used by many companies (at least paypal and 1and1).

To reduce fraud, I am thinking to verify each new customer's phone number. My idea is:

1) customer reports his/her phone number
2) a system will call this number back immediately or shortly
3) customer will hear a number (say, four digit).
4) customer needs to fill the correct number to verify his registration

Some technical concerns:

1) Only landed phone lines are accepted (for US & Canada)
2) If for somehow, the customer hangs up or the call is dicconnected, the system will call again (up to several times)

How to do that and/or any company provides this service? Thanks

[tntpower]

Got answers from sitepoint.

[philbish]

Interesting idea! How about using an open source PBX (Asterisk) with VOIP. Make a little program that interfaces with your site.

[RailMan]

there are ways to use automated dialling, but you still need to verify that the number given is registered to the address given and that the address given matches the address held by the card issuer.

make sure AVS matches. if so, can use infobel.com for many countries - if the country isn't listed on infobel, just search google for "white pages" and the country name.

in the UK you can use the electoral roll. several companies have this online - sometimes its free, sometimes you have to pay. 192.com have a "corporate service" which allows you to automatically check in real time (ie, when you receive transactions).

[trillianjedi]

It might help, but bear in mind that phone numbers in almost any Country are about as disposable as domain names these days, so it's by no means infallible.

TJ

[tntpower]

fraudgate and varilogix provide such service (Thanks to a folk in another forum).

It's very effective to protect us from fraud by using this kind of service. The reason is rather simple: a phone number can be easily linked with a specific person, especially if you exclude mobile phone numbers.

AVS first, then this kind of phone verification and finally Visa 3-D (how MC and AMEX call this?). By employing all these, I think you can significantly protect you from fraud. A service provided by maxmind is also very helpfu.

I don't think Google is very helpful in this area. The information in google or any other search engine may not be up-to-date, let alone to how much time it involves if you have lots of orders.

philbish: Your idea is really great!

[adamxcl]

On another aspect of this, I was just about to post on a dilemma I have. I wish there was a way to verify a large number of phone numbers at a time. Say, I have a directory with tens of thousands of numbers around the world, all businesses. But they go out of business over time and I can find that out manually by directories or google. I am looking for number that could run a batch of numbers and tell me the bad or changed ones. I'm probably dreaming but it would save hundreds of hours a year in manpower.

I have the same problem with direct links but that's another problem and solution.

[Corey Bryant]

TNT - Visa has Verified by Visa, MasterCard has SecureCode, Discover has CID. NOt too sure about AmEx unfortunately.

-Corey