Recently our sales team has been creating contacts with fake numbers to bypass our rule that we require a phone number. Is there a tool similar to kickbox that verifies if a phone number is real or not? I’ve been searching and I haven’t been able to find something unless I connect it directly to a background search tool which seems a little too extreme for this scenario.
Any suggestions?
Hello @katiebroyles
Here are a few options that you can consider:
Twilio
Numverify
Nexmo
These tools can help you validate phone numbers in real-time, which can prevent fake phone numbers from being entered into your system. You can also use these tools to check if a phone number is valid before you send SMS messages or make phone calls to the contact.
Our team had a similar problem where fake numbers would sneak into our contact list, making it hard to keep things reliable. One tool we tried that helped was a basic phone number verification service; it could flag whether a number was active or likely a throwaway. While looking into it, I came across people using a temp mobile number from sites like Tardigrada for temporary sign-ups, which is great for them but tricky for us when we’re after real leads. You might want to explore phone verification services that check number activity but keep it light—full-on background checks felt like overkill for us too.
This is a common problem with sign up pages that require phone verifications. What you will want is a Phone Validation API that offers line type details; phone numbers with non-fixed VoIP fidelity (e.g. Google Voice or burner phones). Trestle’s Real Contact API provides this insight as well as the activity score as a lightweight check.