Verify Geo Permissions

Verify Geographic (Geo) Permissions is designed to visually allow destination countries to be blocked, unblocked(while being protected with Fraud Guard) when sending SMS or Voice OTP messages to those destinations. Defining your Geo Permissions helps to prevent unexpected high SMS or voice costs caused by malicious actors creating unwanted verification requests

You can access the Verify Geo Permissions page in your Twilio Console by navigating to Twilio Console > Verify > Settings > Geo permissions.

To enable a destination country, select them in the list (SMS, Voice, or both) and set them to "Allow All Traffic" or "Disable all Traffic" to block that country and then click Save geographic permissions. All messages sent to countries that are set to "Disable all traffic" will be blocked for the channel that has not been enabled (SMS, Voice, or both).

Protect Your Traffic with Fraud Guard Geo Permissions:

Fraud Guard can be enabled for a country by selecting "Monitor all traffic for blocking Fraud". If you wish to skip Fraud Guard for any country instead select "Allow All Traffic". Fraud Guard or "Monitor all traffic for blocking Fraud" is set by default for all countries in Verify Geo Permissions except certain countries where we observe minimal fraud like United States.

In the above example, all SMS OTP messages will be sent to 'Anguilla (+1264)' while being protected by Fraud Guard. By the same token, no Voice OTP messages will be sent to 'Anguilla (+1264)'.

Individual countries can be searched by name or country code by typing in the search box which will display the results as characters are being typed. You can also apply batch setting to set Geo Permissions for all countries within a continent.

High Risk Countries Acknowledgement:

In an ongoing effort to raise awareness of the risk of SMS Traffic Pumping fraud, Twilio has added a popup asking customers to acknowledge the risk when opting to send SMS traffic to countries Twilio has identified a rise of SMS Traffic Pumping Fraud. Twilio will update this list from time to time.

What do I need to do?

We recommend reviewing the current Verify geo-permissions on your account in Console.

(Support Article) Please take the following steps to protect your account from SMS Traffic Pumping Fraud:

1. Log in to your Twilio Account and verify the traffic history on your account is legitimate in Verify Fraud Insights.
2. Take steps to protect your applications from abuse by following best practices in this SMS Traffic Pumping article, including turning off Verify geo permissions for countries when not in use.

Track Changes to Verify Geo Permissions with Monitor Event Resource:

Any changes made to Verify Geo Permissions can be tracked via the Monitor Event Resource API and Console.