Use Phone and Email Signals

Choose lookup data by the decision it changes. A phone classification can help you select a suitable contact path. An email verdict can prompt a correction before sending. Neither establishes the person's identity, possession of the recipient address or permission for a particular message.

This guide works through a fictional Fieldnotes signup that offers visit confirmations by email or phone. The result is a decision record describing which signals you need, how you treat missing answers and when a separate verification step is appropriate.

Name the recipient decision

Separate questions that need different evidence:

For Fieldnotes, the immediate task is to confirm a requested visit. Marketing enrollment remains a separate choice. Write that purpose into the decision record before adding lookup properties.

Use +12025550188 and Alex@exampel.example.com as fictional inputs for the walkthrough. The phone uses the reserved North American example range and the international format shown in the documentation; the email uses a subdomain of the reserved example.com domain. The results below are illustrative fixtures, not actual lookup responses or predictions for these example destinations. Do not send messages to them.

Work through the phone path

Collect the international number with its country calling code. The phone lookup guide explains accepted input and why an ambiguous local number is rejected instead of assigned a guessed country.

Begin with the base answer. If the decision needs a more precise classification or a network signal, request the corresponding property. Name the action you will take when that property is available and when it is not.

Suppose Fieldnotes receives a mobile line classification, but an optional presence block is unavailable. Preserve both observations. The missing presence result does not establish that the number is inactive. Offer the customer's chosen path under your policy, or ask for another contact method if the task requires evidence you do not have.

For a contrasting case, a property with status: "ok" carries a known value that your policy may reject for this purpose. Explain the next useful action, such as choosing another recipient, without describing the person as fraudulent. Read a property's status before its value; unavailable and inconclusive blocks do not carry a successful answer.

Work through the email path

Send the bare address as the customer supplied it. Preserve its case and associate the response with that exact input. The email lookup guide explains verdicts, confidence and input rules.

If the customer accepts a typo suggestion, perform the next decision against the corrected address. Do not reuse the original address's lookup or verification result. A suggested destination is a guess until the customer chooses it.

For Fieldnotes, a neutral result can lead to a requested address-confirmation challenge under its policy. The customer leaves marketing unchecked. A successful challenge confirms the code result for that address; it does not enroll the customer in marketing.

Separate network signals from identity

Porting or SIM-change information can contribute to a phone-risk review. Define how fresh the evidence must be and what an unavailable answer means before requesting it. Operator coverage varies for live network properties.

An address-quality check cannot prove that the customer owns an account. If you need an identity-related product capability, confirm its actual availability and required evidence before designing around it. Follow Verify's channel and security guidance when the next step is a passcode challenge.

Recover a paid lookup without changing the question

Use the maintained idempotency contract for automated requests that may be retried. Retain the original recipient, selected properties and logical request key. If the response is lost, recover that original request within the documented retention boundary.

Changing the recipient or requested properties creates a different question. Record it as a new lookup rather than using the earlier response as evidence. The email GET form cannot carry an idempotency key; the maintained guide recommends the POST form for automation.

Phone base data and successfully delivered optional properties have distinct billing rules. An answered email lookup can be billed even when it prevents a send. Use Lookup pricing and the maintained guides for the current cost basis; missing data should not be displayed as a successful zero-cost quote.

Review the completed example

This completed Fieldnotes record shows how the evidence changes the visit-confirmation decision. The phone fixture deliberately combines a known negative with an unavailable property. The email fixture requires the customer to choose the corrected address before a new lookup.

The confidence values are sample evidence, not recommended universal thresholds. A neutral result stays inconclusive even after the customer confirms the spelling. Store the actual observation time and apply your evidence-freshness policy when repeating this decision with an authorized recipient.

Keep the recipient decision record

Customer task / intended message / decision owner:
Exact submitted recipient / customer-confirmed correction:
Base lookup result / requested properties and why needed:
Per-property status / returned value / observation time:
Email verdict / confidence / reason / future-verdict policy:
Known-negative action / unavailable or inconclusive action:
Possession check required? / bound recipient / result:
Permission and restrictions checked for this purpose:
Original request identity / recovery result / new question:
Cost basis / evidence expiry / access and retention owner:

Keep personal data and operational evidence under your application's access and retention policy. Test a known result, an unavailable property, a customer-confirmed correction and a lost response before using the decision in production.

Implement the selected path

Use the maintained phone example or email example for the SDK request. Start with Lookup when you are ready to test your inputs, or contact sales about your coverage requirements.