Passwordless, Friction-free and More Secure: Introducing Verify Silent Network Authentication and Verify Fraud Guard

At SIGNAL, we’re excited to launch something that’s going to transform the way millions of mobile users verify their identity online everyday.

In today’s digital landscape, there’s an assumption that the more barriers users are required to jump through during identity verification, the more secure they and the business must be.

And yet, the authentication and verification solutions in play today have themselves created security loopholes that fraudsters can exploit. And by creating friction in those first steps of the user journey, they’re also driving away genuine customers. Research by Liminal found that 42% of customers report abandoning onboarding due to friction.

Our mission is to make user authentication more secure, while taking away the friction so more of your legitimate users activate successfully.

User experience vs security? Now you can have both

Current authentication solutions are complex and they interrupt what should be a seamless user journey. This creates a poor customer experience, which in turn causes customers you’ve paid to attract to abandon the process and your existing customers to churn.

That’s why we have developed a new Verify product that helps identity verification friction disappear for genuine customers - and at the same time strengthens your security against fake and fraudulent users.

Introducing Verify Silent Network Authentication (Public Beta)

Verify Silent Network Authentication is designed to give the user the best possible authentication experience while keeping your business secure. It provides secure user authentication without requiring users to input passwords, verification information, or complete CAPTCHAs.

How Verify Silent Network Authentication works

Verify Silent Network Authentication combines deterministic SIM data from our unrivalled partner network of 56+ mobile carriers across 30+ countries with authoritative data signals to verify whether a user is genuine. This means companies can automatically weed out fake users with no input required by genuine users themselves. It provides a completely passwordless, pain-free and more secure way to sign up or sign back on.

Who can use it

Verify Silent Network Authentication is designed for any consumer-facing business that needs to securely verify its customers or users.

What the difference is

Verify Silent Network Authentication finally ends the tradeoff for businesses between user experience and security. In beta, Silent Network Authentication cut end-to-end authentication and activation time for new users from an average of more than 20 seconds to less than 5 seconds:

Abhishek Agarwal, Product Manager at Gojek, an on-demand multi-service platform and digital payment company who have deployed Verify Silent Network Authentication said, "We determined that it was possible to shift away from traditional SMS OTP and use Silent Network Authentication to improve security and reduce authentication time."

This reduction in the time it takes to authenticate and activate a new user means less time for users to get distracted or frustrated and abandon the process. And it means more time spent by users on your app or platform. Click here to learn more about Silent Network Authentication.

Introducing Verify Fraud Guard (now generally available)

Like many SMS fraud attacks, SMS traffic pumping is on the rise. Criminals take advantage of mobile number input fields on apps, platforms, and websites to generate and receive a one-time password, an app download link, or anything else sent via SMS. The fraudsters send the SMS to numbers they control and receive a share of the fraudulently-generated SMS revenue.

SMS traffic pumping can occur at any time and many companies’ only safeguard is manually monitoring if an attack is taking place so they can block the prefix numbers. With this kind of fraud attack, time is of the essence. We’ve talked to businesses who have been exposed to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fraudulent charges as a result of SMS traffic pumping.

How it works

Twilio Verify Fraud Guard prevents SMS-related fraud by monitoring your current and historical SMS traffic. Whenever there are unusual fluctuations in SMS traffic from a given location, Verify Fraud Guard will automatically block the prefix of the destination of the suspected fraud.

Who can use it

Verify Fraud Guard is now generally available to any Twilio Verify customer using SMS with a mobile number input field.

What the difference is

Verify Fraud Guard blocks fraudulent verification attempts and in doing so, it improves your conversion rates. One of our beta customers, a large social media business, deployed Fraud Guard and saw a 27% increase in their SMS conversion rate, a 42% decrease in cost-per-user, and they saved more than $300k in the first month with an anticipated $1.57M savings over time.

Many businesses attempt to combat this type of fraud by blocking any phone numbers from what are perceived to be “high-risk” countries. Verify Fraud Guard allows businesses to transact with genuine customers from anywhere in the world while automatically identifying and blocking SMS pumping attacks - wherever they originate from.

Trusted Activation solutions

With Verify Silent Network Authentication and Verify Fraud Guard, we’re leading the industry by removing the pain of identity verification, helping our customers activate more genuine customers and making businesses more secure against fraudulent activity.

As we enhance our authentication and fraud prevention solution suite at Twilio, we’re also changing our name from Twilio Account Security to Twilio Trusted Activation. That’s because verification is not just about security against fake and fraudulent accounts, it’s also about successfully activating more of your genuine users.

Aaron joined Twilio in 2021 and leads Twilio’s Identity, Verification, and consumer business. Aaron brings more than 20 years of leadership experience at the nexus of consumer internet, fintech and security. He has helped to build and scale some of the world’s most beloved products. He previously served in product leadership roles at Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, and most recently as GM/CPO of Kiva.org where he built the National Digital Identity for the nation of Sierra Leone. Built fully on the block chain this product was awarded Global Prize for the 2020 World Bank Mission Billion Challenge.