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Can you buy phone number data?

3 points by pirminj ↗ HN
Thanks to twilio, Spammers and Bots can't be stopped by phone number verification anymore. Do you know of any vendor for PN data to be able to block suspicious ones? (labeled "recently reattributet" or "registered < 1 week ago" or "owned by .ISP)

2 comments

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toast0
Data on the phone number doesn't mean anything unless (until?) spammers are forced to use phone nunbers they control.

I don't know if you can get registration dates; it's probably available somewhere, but not easily. Current carrier information is available, but expect to pay about one cent per query. You can lookup original assignment of the number through NANPA data files, but you'll need to download them, do some data massaging, and then index the prefixes however is convenient for you to do lookups.

BenjiWiebe
Just to add to the sibling comment, Twilio isn't the problem either.

The problem is that SS7 (the PSTN control protocol) allows you to set your caller ID to whatever you want.

So any bulk sender, VoIP provider, medium+ business with 2+ phone lines, etc, can either spam you with random phone numbers or sell access to spammers to do the same.

"STIR/SHAKEN" is something to research to see what the government/telephone industry plans to do to stop the problem.