A phone number reputation is a sequence of digits used to identify and connect telephone subscribers to providers via land lines or wireless electronic telephony devices, like cell phones. At its core, a phone number is analogous to a street address and lets the system know how to route calls.

However, as the number of robocalls and spoof calls continue to grow, caller ID reputation is becoming more important than ever. A healthy reputation is the key to avoiding spam mislabeling, which can devastate your call contact rates and ultimately impact your business.

How to Check Phone Number Reputation for Fraud Prevention

In a nutshell, caller ID reputation is how major carriers and phone security app providers view your number’s risk profile based on the history of others reporting it as spam or scam. This data is then used to influence how incoming calls are handled by the provider, such as blocking, filtering, labeling and giving a verified check mark (on iPhones).

The best way to manage your reputation is to take steps to prevent it from being mislabeled in the first place. This can be done by ensuring that you’re only calling people who have agreed to receive your marketing calls, respecting customers’ requests not to be called again, and making sure to use a dialer with a smart ring feature that doesn’t cause high-volume redialing. It’s also a good idea to register your numbers with tools such as First Orion, Hiya and Transaction Network Services to ensure they aren’t spoofed and make you appear more trustworthy.