Talkdesk Identity™ now extends phone number validation to incoming SMS and WhatsApp conversations, bringing the same protection you use in voice to your digital flows. When your digital interaction is routed through the Studio Validate Phone component, Identity automatically validates the phone number (e.g., line type, carrier, fraud score) so you can detect risky numbers early and act before exposure.
Table of Contents
- How it works (Studio)
- Agent Experience
- What’s Included in Validation
- Using Results for Automation & Routing
- Availability and Limitations
How it works (Studio)
Configure the Validate Phone component in an Incoming Message flow.
At the start of the flow, in the Incoming Message component, define a variable for the contact’s phone number and map it from the channel:
- For SMS, head to the SMS variables and populate a variable name for the source phone.
- For WhatsApp, go to the WhatsApp variables and populate a variable name for the source phone.
Once the source phone variable is mapped in the Initial step, you can configure the Validate Phone component. Its structure is very similar to what exists for voice flows:
- Preferences (Input variable): Here, you select the variable you created at the start of the flow. This is the number that will be validated.
- Variables: The component returns several risk indicators as variables. You can choose which ones to expose and later reuse them in conditions, routing, or snapshots. Examples include Fraud Score (0–100%), Line Type, Carrier, Spammer, and Leaked Online. All variables are described in the section What’s included in validation.
- Exits: Define the paths for your flow when phone validation is successful, when no phone number is available to validate, or when validation fails due to reasons such as an incorrectly formatted phone number.
Once an interaction passes through the Validate Phone component, Identity runs validation automatically. You can create output variables for any parameter and reuse them in conditional logic or send them to agents via Conversations’ snapshot.
Agent Experience
In Conversations, agents can open the Identity tab to view validation details for the active SMS/WhatsApp conversation, just as they do with voice calls. This equips agents to handle potential fraud with confidence and context.
In the Conversations Snapshot tab, agents can also view the number’s Fraud Score and/or other Phone Validation parameters that are considered useful without the need to change to the Identity tab. To enable this, simply configure those parameters as variables in the Studio flow [1] and select them in Manage Context [2].
What’s Included in Validation
Digital validation surfaces the same parameters that also exist for voice, with one exception:
- Call Attestation (also known as Spoofing Detection, which is dependent on the STIR/SHAKEN protocol) is a voice-only feature and does not apply to digital channels.
You’ll still see:
| Parameter | Description | Possible Values |
| VOIP | Illustrates if this phone number is a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) or a digital phone number. | boolean, null |
| Risky | Points out if this phone number is associated with fraudulent activity, scams, fake accounts, or other suspicious behavior. | boolean, null |
| Valid | Indicates if the phone number is considered valid based on the assigned phone numbers available to carriers in the caller’s country. |
boolean
|
| Active | Reveals if this phone number is a live phone number that is currently active. | boolean, null |
| Leaked | Has this phone number recently been exposed in an online database breach or compromise? |
boolean
|
| Status | The phone validation status as a result of the Fraud Score. | string |
| Carrier | The carrier this phone number has been assigned to, or "N/A" if unknown. | string |
| Country | The two-character country code for this phone number. | string |
| Spammer | Indicates if the phone number has recently been reported for spam or harassing calls/texts. | boolean |
| Pre Paid | Indicates if this phone number is associated with a prepaid service plan. |
boolean, null
|
| Line Type | The type of line this phone number is associated with (Toll-Free, Wireless, Landline, Satellite, VOIP, Premium Rate, Pager, and others) or "N/A" if unknown. Line Type can play an important role in understanding phone number reputation. | string |
| Fraud Score | The risk score, which measures how likely a phone number is to be fraudulent. |
integer, 0 - 100
|
| Recent Abuse | Details whether this phone number has been associated with recent or ongoing fraud. | boolean, null |
| Validations (last 24h) | Counts how many times the Phone Validation was executed for this number in the last 24 hours. This value can be useful if there is a significant number that raises suspicion of fraudulent activity. | integer |
Note: Being risky is not the only important factor when determining the phone validation overall status. High-risk is a combination of the “valid”, "fraud_score", "recent_abuse", "VOIP", "prepaid", "active", and "risky" variables.
Tip: Some carriers, especially among ported numbers or prepaid plans, can represent a higher risk. VOIP numbers are inherently riskier than wireless/cellular and landline numbers.
Using Results for Automation & Routing
Because each parameter can be exposed as a variable, you can:
- Route or escalate based on fraud score (for example, treat ≥75% as suspicious by default) or combine fraud score with other relevant parameters for your business.
- Apply specific flows/paths when a number is flagged (for example, activate any other security protocols like security questions that can be done through an Autopilot or the Agent).
- Rate-limit or challenge repeat behaviors using validations in the last 24 hours.
Availability and Limitations
Digital validation is now available for incoming SMS and WhatsApp interactions. At this time:
- Details are visible in the Identity tab in Conversations.
- Digital data is not yet available in the Identity App or Reporting datasets.