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Protect Your Verify Application with Service Rate Limits

Service Rate Limits makes it easy to leverage Twilio's battle-test rate limiting services to protect your deployment. With Service Rate Limits, you can define the keys to meter and limits to enforce when starting verifications. This enables you to rate limit on end-user IP addresses, session IDs or other unique IDs that are important to your application. Together with Verify's built-in platform protections Service Rate Limits give you turnkey protections with flexibility.

Prerequisites:

  1. Create a Verification Service

Create a Rate Limit

The Service Rate Limit resource represents the key that your application will provide when starting a phone verification request. For example, you may create a rate limit for an end-user IP address to prevent a malicious bot.

Selecting Properties to Rate Limit

Rate Limits provide the capability to enforce limitations, but they are not prescriptive about what properties to limit. Determining which properties to limit is determined by how and where you have deployed Verify. For example, rate limiting by IP Address makes sense for a mobile consumer application where the End User IP address is easily accessible. But rate limiting on IP Address is less effective if Verify is deployed behind a reserve proxy without access to the End User IP Address.

Examples of properties to rate limit include:

  • End User IP Address
  • Geolocation of End User IP Address
  • Phone Number
  • Phone Number Country Code (ex +1 in the US or +44 in GB)
  • Session ID
  • User Agent

The flexibility afforded by Rate Limits in Verify means that you can enforce limits on "mixed" properties simply by concatenating values together. This is particularly helpful for enforcing rate limits on properties that are highly correlated.

Possible examples of highly correlated properties include:

  • Phone Number Country Code and Geolocation of End User IP Address
  • Phone Number and Geolocation of End User IP Address
  • Phone Number and End User IP Address
Parameters in REST API format
service_sid
Path
post sid<VA> Not PII

The SID of the Service the resource is associated with.

unique_name
Required
post string Not PII

Provides a unique and addressable name to be assigned to this Rate Limit, assigned by the developer, to be optionally used in addition to SID. This value should not contain PII.

description
Optional
post string Not PII

Description of this Rate Limit

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        Create a Rate Limit

        Create a Bucket

        The Service Rate Limit Bucket resource defines the limit that should be enforced against the key it is associated with. A Rate Limit can have multiple buckets so that you can detect and stop attacks at different velocities.

        Parameters in REST API format
        service_sid
        Path
        post sid<VA> Not PII

        The SID of the Service the resource is associated with.

        rate_limit_sid
        Path
        post sid<RK> Not PII

        The Twilio-provided string that uniquely identifies the Rate Limit resource.

        max
        Required
        post integer Not PII

        Maximum number of requests permitted in during the interval.

        interval
        Required
        post integer Not PII

        Number of seconds that the rate limit will be enforced over.

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              Create a Bucket

              Start a Phone Verification

              To use the Rate Limits we need to update the request that starts phone verifications to include the values we want to limit. To do this we will add the new `RateLimit` parameter to our request.

              Parameters in REST API format
              service_sid
              Path
              post sid<VA> Not PII

              The SID of the verification Service to create the resource under.

              to
              Required
              post string PII MTL: 30 DAYS

              The phone number or email to verify. Phone numbers must be in E.164 format.

              channel
              Required
              post string Not PII

              The verification method to use. One of: email, sms, whatsapp, call, sna or auto.

              custom_friendly_name
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              A custom user defined friendly name that overwrites the existing one in the verification message

              send_digits
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              The digits to send after a phone call is answered, for example, to dial an extension. For more information, see the Programmable Voice documentation of sendDigits.

              locale
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              Locale will automatically resolve based on phone number country code for SMS, WhatsApp, and call channel verifications. It will fallback to English or the template’s default translation if the selected translation is not available. This parameter will override the automatic locale resolution. See supported languages and more information here.

              custom_code
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              A pre-generated code to use for verification. The code can be between 4 and 10 characters, inclusive.

              amount
              Optional
              post string PII MTL: 1 DAYS

              The amount of the associated PSD2 compliant transaction. Requires the PSD2 Service flag enabled.

              payee
              Optional
              post string PII MTL: 1 DAYS

              The payee of the associated PSD2 compliant transaction. Requires the PSD2 Service flag enabled.

              rate_limits
              Optional
              post object Not PII

              The custom key-value pairs of Programmable Rate Limits. Keys correspond to unique_name fields defined when creating your Rate Limit. Associated value pairs represent values in the request that you are rate limiting on. You may include multiple Rate Limit values in each request.

              channel_configuration
              Optional
              post object Not PII

              email channel configuration in json format. The fields 'from' and 'from_name' are optional but if included the 'from' field must have a valid email address.

              app_hash
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              Your App Hash to be appended at the end of your verification SMS body. Applies only to SMS. Example SMS body: <#> Your AppName verification code is: 1234 He42w354ol9.

              template_sid
              Optional
              post sid<HJ> Not PII

              The message template. If provided, will override the default template for the Service. SMS and Voice channels only.

              template_custom_substitutions
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              A stringified JSON object in which the keys are the template's special variables and the values are the variables substitutions.

              device_ip
              Optional
              post string Not PII

              Strongly encouraged if using the auto channel. The IP address of the client's device. If provided, it has to be a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.

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                    Start a Verification with a Rate Limit

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