Methodology
What a check establishes, what it can’t know, and how to read the result.
A check takes the contact details you already have and asks one question: do these details belong to one real person? Each value is matched to an identity, the record is judged against the identity most of it points to, and you get a verdict for every value plus when that identity was first and last seen.
How a check works
- You send a record: a name and any mix of up to 5 emails, 5 phone numbers and 5 mailing addresses.
- Each value is matched. We pass the record to a third-party identity data provider, whose data is built from real online activity. It reports, value by value, which identity each one belongs to.
- The record is judged against one identity. When values point to different identities, the one with the most evidence behind it is the identity the record is judged against.
- You get the result: a verdict for each value, standardized versions of what you sent, whether the record hangs together, and the identity’s first and last seen dates.
What each verdict means
| Verdict | API value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Primary match | primary_match | The value belongs to the identity the record is judged against, and it is that identity’s main value of its kind. |
| Secondary match | secondary_match | The value belongs to the same identity, but it is not the main one: an older address, a second phone, a work email. |
| Different person | different_identity | The value was verified, but it belongs to someone other than the identity the rest of the record points to. |
| Unverified | unverified | Our data provider could not tie the value to any identity. |
| Unknown | unknown | The provider returned no usable verdict for this value. |
A field you didn’t send comes back as not_provided. The record as a whole is consistent when no verified value belongs to a different person. When nothing at all ties to an identity, the result reads: “No validated profile exists for this person or combination. Proceed with caution.”
What first seen and last seen measure
First seen and last seen describe the identity, not any single email, phone or address. They are the earliest and most recent dates our data provider observed that identity in its activity data, with the number of days since each.
- A recent last seen date means the identity behind the record has been active lately.
- A long gap since last seen suggests the record may be stale, and is worth refreshing before you rely on it.
- Neither date tells you that a particular email or phone number is in use today.
What a check can’t tell you
- Whether a mailbox accepts mail right now. We don’t contact mail servers or send test messages.
- Whether a phone line is in service, who the carrier is, or what type of line it is.
- Whether the postal service will deliver to an address. Standardizing an address is not postal certification.
- Whether someone is who they say they are. A check is not identity verification: no documents, selfies or government records are involved.
- Anything about a person’s character, creditworthiness or eligibility. ContactValidate doesn’t score people, and you won’t get a risk or fraud score.
Unverified does not mean fake. Identity data has gaps: new email addresses, recently ported numbers and people with little online activity can all come back unverified. Treat it as “we couldn’t confirm this”, not as proof that a detail is invented.
Where the data comes from and what we keep
Matching is done by a third-party identity data provider. We keep each result so you can see it again in your history and through the API, and we keep the provider’s full response on our own servers for billing, auditing and quality. Customers only ever see the result described on this page. Details are in the Privacy Policy.
Permitted use
ContactValidate is not a “consumer reporting agency” as defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), and its results are not “consumer reports” as defined in the FCRA. Results may not be used as a factor in determining eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing or any other purpose for which a consumer report may be used under the FCRA.
For request and response fields, see the developer docs.