Verify and Validate Phone Numbers

verify and validate phone numbers to ensure the message you’re trying to deliver is going where it needs to go. Whether collected directly from the customer or via 3rd party data, phone validation scans a number against information provided by telecommunication companies to verify it is active and valid. This can be performed in real time or as a bulk service to cleanse existing client data.

The most popular tools for verification use regular expressions to check the format of a phone number but this can be misleading. Regular expressions are culturally dependant, and may not detect all typos or inconsistencies in the way a phone number is entered. Moreover, a regex can only tell you the type of number (landline, mobile) but can’t confirm it is an active line or that it has a carrier attached to it.

Free Reverse Phone Lookup with Name: Find Out Who’s Calling

A more robust solution is to validate a phone number against a database. This can include determining the type of number (landline, business or prepaid), checking whether it has been listed on blocklists or blacklisted, and identifying whether it is connected to a mobile network or landline. Some solutions also check whether a phone number is international, identifies the network operator or country and performs a syntax check to ensure it follows E164, RFC3966 formats.

A reliable phone number validation API can verify a number in seconds, in bulk or on-demand and will save you the hassle of correcting bad data later. It will not only help streamline the sign-up process for your users but will also improve email and SMS deliverability and enable you to offer better personalised communication with your customers.