Docs

Risk Scoring

Every validation response includes a risk_score between 0 and 100. Zero means no risk; one hundred means the highest risk. The score is designed to be dropped straight into a downstream rule \u2014 no math required.

The four risk tiers

Use the recommended action as a starting point and tune for your own risk appetite.

Low Risk

score 0 – 25

Safe to proceed

Strong positive signals across every factor. Treat as a clean, trusted contact.

Medium Risk

score 26 – 50

Proceed with caution

A small number of weak signals. Acceptable for most flows; add friction for high-value actions.

High Risk

score 51 – 75

Manual review recommended

Multiple negative signals stacking up. Send to a queue, ask for step-up verification, or hold the order.

Critical Risk

score 76 – 100

Reject or block

Strong, layered fraud signals. We recommend rejecting outright or routing to a fraud analyst.

What we look at for phone numbers

Four independent factors feed into every phone score.

Number format validity

Is it parseable as a real number under E.164 and the destination country’s numbering plan?

Country & region detection

Where the number is registered, plus consistency with the dialing prefix.

Line type

Mobile, landline, VoIP, toll-free, or unknown — each carries a different baseline trust level.

Known fraud pattern indicators

Repetitive patterns, sequentially issued ranges, and other heuristics we tune continuously.

What we look at for email addresses

Four independent factors feed into every email score.

Format & syntax check

RFC-compliant structure, length limits, and character whitelisting.

Domain existence

Whether the domain resolves and has the records required to receive mail.

Disposable email detection

Cross-checked against our maintained list of throwaway and burner inbox providers.

Deliverability signal

A composite signal of whether the mailbox is reachable and active.

Live example

Run a check against the public demo endpoint and see how the score is interpreted.

Raw API response

{
  "valid": true,
  "type": "landline",
  "country": "CH",
  "risk_score": 4.2,
  "formatted": "+41 44 668 18 00"
}

Score interpretation

risk_score

4/100

Low Risk

Safe to proceed

Strong positive signals across every factor. Treat as a clean, trusted contact.

A note on the score

We deliberately do not publish the exact weighting or internal thresholds of each factor. That is what keeps the score useful: if it were transparent, fraudsters would game it. We tune the model continuously based on aggregate signals across all customers — no individual data is ever shared between accounts.

Need a custom scoring profile for your industry (banking, gambling, e-commerce, SaaS)? That ships with the Pro plan.