Telephone number verification (or validation) services are online services used to establish whether a given telephone number is in service. They may include a form of Turing test to further determine if a human answers or answering equipment such as a modem, fax, voice mMail or answering machine.
Verification services are often used to limit sockpuppetry, underage sign-ups, spamming and illegal activities like harassment, scams and fraud. Operators and their clients include:
Any verification operation which sells sets of contact numbers generated through its marketing operations will gain a premium for an efficient list of “clean” numbers. Call center outbound telephone campaigns save time and resources bypassing undefined or mechanized equipment numbers. [1]
Telephone numbers entered into an online sign-up form can be checked in real time, by implementing AJAX (background web page processing) type call to a telephone number verification service while the form is still being filled in.
To thwart fraud, it is possible to match an online customer to the telephone number owner, to certify it is in fact the same person who owns it. This service is of increasing value to online store managers, banks and credit card processors, who are faced with increasing quantities of attempts to make fraudulent purchases such as by those using stolen credit card details.
An aborted call is made to the subscriber line. This automated service “listens” to check for ringback tones, busy signals, answered call, voice mail automated answering, or network operator injected messages such as “the number called is not in service”. This method benefits from being international and covering mobile phones. However, the check can take up to 30 seconds to complete (average time 9 seconds). This delay can be handled well by the use of AJAX background processes for example by allowing the user to continue filling in other fields in a form while the line test is performed.
It is possible to employ such methods further to verify that genuine people answer the telephone at that number by requesting a key press tone "Press one to 'unsubscribe'." Often this method is used to clean lists, and rather than unsubscribing, the number is categorized as a live one.
To verify that a telephone number exists and authorize its use, subscribers supply a telephone number on which to establish service, often via a web page. A unique code is first indicated or displayed to the customer via the web site, then an automated call is then placed to the supplied subscriber telephone number. To validate the transaction, the code entered via the telephone keypad must match. This method is used by Google Voice and online banking services such as Lloyds TSB.
Certain services offer to check telephone numbers alongside other personal details, gained from various public sources e.g. the Electoral roll and from the imprints left on by their activities, for examples from transactions made using credit cards. The advantage of a database check is that the lookup can be very quick (sub 1s), however no databases exist to cover all telephone subscriber lines internationally, with mobile telephones being particularly problematic to trace - especially Pay as you go (phone) (non contract) arrangements which often have no registered owner. Some databases are very detailed and can correlate telephone numbers with physical addresses, e-mail addresses, ownership and sometimes even personal details. Such detail can help with combating fraud as well as allowing greater understanding of a customer base.
At the other end of the scale, other database checking services might only check a telephone number against the allotted telephone number banks and therefore only indicate if a number is in a range that might be active and are therefore inconclusive.
A JavaScript function can check to see if a phone number is a valid format, i.e., is numeric, starts with a valid set of numbers ("0" for local, or an international dialing prefix followed by a valid country code and is not too short to be a phone number. At first a JavaScript function is used to clear out any spacer characters. Next, a function is employed to check if the phone number contain only numbers, last the length of the string is checked permitting only phone numbers with an allowable number of digits for the country.
It is prudent to carry out such checks even if a further method is employed in addition, so that telephone numbers to avoid wasting time and resource on numbers that are clearly not in a correct format to qualify as a telephone number, e.g. too short.
Some other methods that are being employed today are:
A telephone card, calling card or phone card for short, is a credit card-size plastic or paper card used to pay for telephone services. It is not necessary to have the physical card except with a stored-value system; knowledge of the access telephone number to dial and the PIN is sufficient. Standard cards which can be purchased and used without any sort of account facility give a fixed amount of credit and are discarded when used up; rechargeable cards can be topped up, or collect payment in arrears. The system for payment and the way in which the card is used to place a telephone call vary from card to card.
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telephony, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR systems deployed in the network are sized to handle large call volumes and also used for outbound calling as IVR systems are more intelligent than many predictive dialer systems.
A personal identification number (PIN), PIN code, or sometimes redundantly a PIN number, is a numeric passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
A ringback number is a telephone number for a telephone line that automatically calls the line that the call was placed from, after the caller has hung up. The typical use of this facility is by telephone company technicians for testing a new installation or for trouble-shooting.
In telecommunications, a callback or call-back occurs when the originator of a call is immediately called back in a second call as a response.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
In the United Kingdom, telephone numbers are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, which is the system for assigning telephone numbers to subscriber stations.
A check verification service provides businesses or individuals with either the ability to check the validity of the actual check or draft being presented, or the ability to verify the history of the account holder, or both.
GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available over the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to mobile phone subscribers all over the world. The GSM standards are defined by the 3GPP collaboration and implemented in hardware and software by equipment manufacturers and mobile phone operators. The common standard makes it possible to use the same phones with different companies' services, or even roam into different countries. GSM is the world's most dominant mobile phone standard.
A prepaid mobile device, also known as a pay-as-you-go (PAYG), pay-as-you-talk, pay and go, go-phone, prepay, or burner phone, is a mobile device such as a phone for which credit is purchased in advance of service use. The purchased credit is used to pay for telecommunications services at the point the service is accessed or consumed. If there is no credit, then access is denied by the cellular network or Intelligent Network. Users can top up their credit at any time using a variety of payment mechanisms.
In Argentina, area codes are two, three, or four digits long. Local customer numbers are six to eight digits long. The total number of digits is ten, for example, phone number (11) 1234-5678 for Buenos Aires is made up of a 2-digit area code number and an 8-digit subscriber's number, while (383) 123-4567 would be an example of a Catamarca number.
Traitor tracing schemes help trace the source of leaks when secret or proprietary data is sold to many customers. In a traitor tracing scheme, each customer is given a different personal decryption key. (Traitor tracing schemes are often combined with conditional access systems so that, once the traitor tracing algorithm identifies a personal decryption key associated with the leak, the content distributor can revoke that personal decryption key, allowing honest customers to continue to watch pay television while the traitor and all the unauthorized users using the traitor's personal decryption key are cut off.)
Internet fraud prevention is the act of stopping various types of internet fraud. Due to the many different ways of committing fraud over the Internet, such as stolen credit cards, identity theft, phishing, and chargebacks, users of the Internet, including online merchants, financial institutions and consumers who make online purchases, must make sure to avoid or minimize the risk of falling prey to such scams.
The regulation of telephone numbers in Germany is the responsibility of the Federal Network Agency of the German government. The agency has a mandate to telecommunications in Germany and other infrastructure systems.
Credit card fraud is an inclusive term for fraud committed using a payment card, such as a credit card or debit card. The purpose may be to obtain goods or services or to make payment to another account, which is controlled by a criminal. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is the data security standard created to help financial institutions process card payments securely and reduce card fraud.
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other public and private networks. Modern smart phones have added a built-in layer of abstraction whereby individuals or businesses are saved into a contacts application and the numbers no longer have to be written down or memorized.
Digital identity is used in Australia by residents to validate who they are over digital media, such as over the Internet.
STIR/SHAKEN, or SHAKEN/STIR, is a suite of protocols and procedures intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks. Caller ID spoofing is used by robocallers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source, often a nearby phone number with the same area code and exchange, or from well-known agencies like the Internal Revenue Service or Ontario Provincial Police. This sort of spoofing is common for calls originating from voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems, which can be located anywhere in the world.