Lookup by Twilio • Hacker News Board

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#51

Post by Tomdarkness » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 12:47 AM UTC

Looks interesting but seems to be lacking a bit in the mobile number lookup department. The current service we use for mobile numbers can provide:

- Is the phone number not only valid in terms of syntax but a number actually registered to a subscriber?

- Is the subscriber currently connected to the network? (Normally indicates if their phone is switched on or off with the exception of not having a signal)

- Has the phone number or subscriber been barred or blacklisted in any way?

- Network that the number originally belonged to

- Network that the number is currently registered with. For example if they ported their number from another provider this will be different from the network the number originally belonged to.

- Network that the subscriber is currently connected to. So say if you were roaming in a different country this would return the network the phone is currently roaming on. Can be used to see if someone is out of the country.

This works mostly worldwide with a few exceptions. In a few countries we can actually determine if you are on a prepay or contract plan as well.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#52

Post by mikeroher » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 12:50 AM UTC

pgib wrote: post #3

My telco was charging $8/month for visual voicemail, so I opted to buy a Twilio number for $1/month, and set my phone to forward no answer/busy/unavailable to a simple Twilio app I wrote that handles voicemail. When someone leaves me a message, I get an SMS with the message and caller details. I've been using OpenCNAM ( https://www.opencnam.com ) for the caller ID look-up. I implemented something similar for our offi…

I'm looking to set up something up like this. Could you post the source of your simple app?

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#53

Post by alexkinch » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 12:59 AM UTC

robotfelix wrote: post #32

andrewguenther wrote: post #5

I find it interesting that you can get the mobile carrier from this. The first thing I pictured was a voice phishing attack: "Hello, this is T-Mobile, there's a problem with your account..." you get the gist.

It's worth noting that the carrier it returns and the brand of network aren't necessarily the same - at least here in the UK. For example the Giffgaff network is carried by O2, and a UK landline rented through Twilio appears to be carried by Jersey Telecom.

See my answer here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300690 - about why you're getting O2 for a Giffgaff number (Giffgaff is an O2 MVNO, and owned by O2's parent Telefonica as it happens).

Re: a Twilio UK landline number coming up as JT, as you're probably looking at the results of a SS7-MAP command that returns the SMS routing info for a particular number, in this case it's likely that JT look after the SMS side of that number (routing for voice and SMS and the networks themselves are generally quite separate).

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#54

Post by OpenCNAM » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

pgib wrote: post #3

My telco was charging $8/month for visual voicemail, so I opted to buy a Twilio number for $1/month, and set my phone to forward no answer/busy/unavailable to a simple Twilio app I wrote that handles voicemail. When someone leaves me a message, I get an SMS with the message and caller details. I've been using OpenCNAM ( https://www.opencnam.com ) for the caller ID look-up. I implemented something similar for our offi…

Hi pgib (and everyone else),

Thanks for the opencnam mention. We are about to launch www.everyoneapi.com -- version 2. The current everyoneapi offers the same lookups that Twilio offers, but we will be lowering our price and adding even more data-points. Our reverse phone append product offers a lot more than just linetype and carrier. The parent company to both opencnam and everyoneapi is telo (www.telo.com). If anyone has any questions or requests, feel free to contact support@telo.com!

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#55

Post by jonknee » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:25 AM UTC

Tomdarkness wrote: post #51

Looks interesting but seems to be lacking a bit in the mobile number lookup department. The current service we use for mobile numbers can provide: - Is the phone number not only valid in terms of syntax but a number actually registered to a subscriber? - Is the subscriber currently connected to the network? (Normally indicates if their phone is switched on or off with the exception of not having a signal) - Has the p…

Who are you currently using? It seems odd that the current connection status is something that is shared.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#56

Post by jonknee » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

RobSpectre wrote: post #27

theraven wrote: post #24

Someone is going to have bad analytics for this link. utm_medium=email&utm_source=prodlnch&utm_campaign=introducing_lookup_from_twilio_20150331&utm_content=prdlnch

Yes. Yes we will. :'(

A higher than 100% click thru rate!

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#57

Post by antsam » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:04 AM UTC

Neat. Also, it looks like it defaults to saying a number is mobile if you give it something like NNN5551234.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#58

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:48 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #55

Tomdarkness wrote: post #51

Looks interesting but seems to be lacking a bit in the mobile number lookup department. The current service we use for mobile numbers can provide: - Is the phone number not only valid in terms of syntax but a number actually registered to a subscriber? - Is the subscriber currently connected to the network? (Normally indicates if their phone is switched on or off with the exception of not having a signal) - Has the p…

Who are you currently using? It seems odd that the current connection status is something that is shared.

Yeah, I don't even know how that would be possible unless it's owned by one of the phone companies and is only available for their users. I highly doubt any telco would share that data publicly, especially if all you need is the subscriber's number.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#59

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:53 AM UTC

chralieboy wrote: post #37

RobSpectre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Jon - Rob from Twilio here. Good feedback - appreciate you sharing. We do have geographic information with each webhook sharing city, state and zip - agree it would be useful to have this in the Lookup resources as well.

Are you able verify that the user's billing address is within a given area or return information related to that? nextdoor.com uses it to verify that you live where you say you do and I'd definitely pay to validate that information.

I don't think that'd be possible with [Local number portability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability). You can move your number anywhere, with a mobile number you can get a number anywhere, and with VoIP services, you don't even necessarily need to be in the US to get a US number. There's absolutely no way to verify the person actually lives where the number is supposed to be.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#60

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:55 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #49

US carrier info is way out of date. It shows one of my numbers as Sprint, but it was ported to T-Mobile over a year ago. That used to be the curse of Google Voice. They'd only send SMS to a mobile number, but their database for recognizing mobile numbers was terrible. It does recognize a Twilo number properly, though.

That's because there's no real way for them to know you moved a number. Nobody knows you moved the number except the two companies involved. So, unless they had direct access to the customer records of each telco, they can only guess by the original owner.