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Verify Fraud Guard


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Fraud Guard is now GA (Generally Available) and available to all Verify customers at no extra cost. Fraud Guard is enabled by default for all Verify customers.

Verify Fraud Guard is now supported for customers using custom verification codes only in Standard or Max protection levels.

Currently only the SMS channel is supported.

Verify Fraud Guard uses automatic SMS fraud detection to block suspicious messages from being sent by your Verify Service. It works by analyzing your current and historical SMS traffic for unusual patterns. When it detects fluctuations in SMS destination traffic or SMS pumping fraud, Fraud Guard automatically blocks the prefix of the destination of the suspected fraud.


Enable Fraud Guard

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When creating a new Verify Service, you will be prompted on whether you want to enable or disable Fraud Guard.

For an existing Service, you can enable or disable Fraud Guard in your Twilio Console by navigating to Twilio Console > Verify > Services page(link takes you to an external page) and selecting your Service. This will open the Service settings page where you can select the SMS tab and adjust the Enable Fraud Guard option for that Service.

Once Fraud Guard is enabled on your Service, no further action is needed and your protection will begin immediately.


You can fine tune your Service's Fraud Guard protection level from cautious to aggressive blocking to best suit your business needs.

2023-06-08 at 5.38.32 PM.

To adjust your protection level, navigate to the Twilio Console > Verify > Services page(link takes you to an external page) and select your Service. This will open the Service settings page where you can select the SMS tab and adjust the Protection Level. You'll notice there's three options available: Basic, Standard, and Max.

  • Basic: The foundational level of fraud protection with cautious blocking. It provides a good balance between blocking fraudulent activities and minimizing false positives. We recommend using this if you primarily have a domestic presence in North America which consists of low fraud risk countries.
  • Standard: The default protection level with moderate blocking. When the degree of fraud blocking increases, it is important to note that false positives may also slightly increase (<1%). We recommend using this mode if you have high value signups coming in from users all over the globe and would like to strike a balance against maximizing user conversion with minimum friction.
  • Max: The highest level of protection with aggressive blocking. It is essential to consider that false positives may occur occasionally (<2%). Our team is dedicated to continually optimizing the system to maintain a high level of accuracy. We recommend using this mode if you have a global presence to better protect yourself in high fraud risk countries.

Twilio uses a baseline of expected Verification data to find outliers in behavior based traffic patterns. We combine behavioral data with known explicit fraud schemes to filter out bad behavior.

Our model is always changing and uses multiple parameters to determine fraud. Examples of things we may temporarily block could include:

  • Verifications to a specific region, country or locale we know is engaging in SMS pumping
  • Verifications in a country your Account has never sent SMS to previously
  • Verifications with parameters and characteristics that would suggest non-human behavior

We understand the importance of balancing security and the customer experience, and our team is committed to refining our algorithms to provide the best possible protection without compromising your customer experience.


Preventing false positives

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Like any fraud prevention feature, there's a small chance our models may flag legitimate users as suspicious. We're constantly monitoring our results and adapting the fraud detection model to keep false positives extremely low.

Safe List

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You can mark known phone numbers using the Safe List feature so they are never blocked. This provides an additional safety net against false positives, so the numbers are never erroneously blocked by Fraud Guard or Geo permissions. Add known phone numbers to the Safe List by:

We also recommend reviewing your Verify Geo Permissions feature to make sure that destinations outside of your business focus are disabled.

You can also take these actions if you suspect false positives:


When Fraud Guard detects fraud on your Verify account, you will receive an email notification informing you of the event with a link to view more in your Verify logs. We recommend checking your logs when this happens to ensure that the country prefix being blocked on your behalf is valid.

SMS Fraud Insights dashboard

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All Verify customers have access to the Verify SMS Fraud Insights dashboard on Twilio Console(link takes you to an external page). The dashboard illustrates the impact fraud could have had without intervention, and also allows you to discover trends and insights that you can use to better optimize your product against fraud.

To view your dashboard, go to Twilio Console(link takes you to an external page) and navigate to Monitor > Insights > Verify > Fraud which will open the Overview tab. There, you'll find several sections relating to your Fraud metrics.

Performance Metrics

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Verify Fraud Guard Performance Metrics v2.0.

This section displays key metrics to monitor fraud that can be exported as a CSV.

  • Allowed Verification Attempts : The total number of verification attempts sent on the SMS channel without being blocked by Fraud Guard or Geo permissions.
  • Fraud Blocked Attempts : The total number of SMS verification attempts blocked by Fraud Guard and Geo permissions.
  • Success Rate : The percentage of approved verifications over the total number of verification sessions created.
  • Estimated Cost Savings (USD) : This is the estimated amount of revenue saved by blocking the send of an outbound SMS verification attempt for a fraudulent number. This is calculated based on the destination country using the Twilio Standard SMS Pricing Guide(link takes you to an external page) . For example, if Twilio blocks 67,000 messages to Russia where SMS costs $0.144, we estimate $9,648 revenue saved. Actual amount of revenue saved may vary depending on your pricing plan.
CountryAmount of SMS Messages BlockedCost of Terminating Each SMSEstimated Cost Saved
USA14,000$0.0075$105
Kazakhstan125,000$0.1440$18,000
Russia67,000$0.1440$9,648
Total Estimated Cost Savings$27,753

Error 60410 will show in the Twilio error logs when an SMS delivery is blocked by Fraud Guard.

You can also view any error messages that occurred via Verify Logs in Twilio Console(link takes you to an external page) by opening the Verification details page of a Verification log. See Viewing Logs with Twilio Console for more information.


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