Flagging wrong phone numbers
July 12, 2012
A while back, we introduced a feature to allow users to mark a phone number as incorrect. When we did this, we required the user to prove that he or she had access to the corresponding phone line. What we didn't anticipate were users who tried out a phone number, found it to be invalid, and subsequently came back to tell us about it.
We started noticing this problem when a lot of automated phone calls failed. We manually called these numbers and verified that they were indeed invalid numbers. Realizing this, we decided to allow users indicate a phone number is wrong, even if they don't have access to the corresponding phone line.
This approach does allow mischievous pranksters to wrongly flag a phone number as incorrect. When a provider tries to claim a profile, he or she will still be able to proceed with a number that has been flagged. Once that profile has been claimed, then other users will not be able to flag numbers to prevent such abuse from happening.
With this compromise, we'll hopefully end up with more accurate data.