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davideo7
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How do I add a Registration form that requires Phone Activation to my site?

I've seen sites where you have to activate your membership using a phone.  Basically what happens is they either send you a text message or a computer calls your home phone telling you the activation code.

I've had problems on my site where spamming users create many accounts on my site only to use them to spam but if I put a restriction like this on my registration, I'd have less problems like this.

So my question is, how can I make Phone Activation a requirement for my site?  Are there any services or scripts on the internet that do this?

Thanks.
PHPVulnerabilitiesLinux

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Ray Paseur

8/22/2022 - Mon
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Ray Paseur

Information on CAPTCHA:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_9849-Making-CAPTCHA-Friendlier-with-PHP-Image-Manipulation.html

Registration and email confirmation:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/A_3939-Registration-and-Email-Confirmation-in-PHP.html

Phone confirmation is not meaningfully stronger than email confirmation if you add a CAPTCHA test to the email confirmation page.

Another idea that I've used before, but do not have a code example I can share, is comment moderation.  All comments are moderated until the moderator releases the user from moderation.  Released users are free to comment at will.  Three or more rejected comments results in the user account suspension.  If you couple this with a checkbox on each comment to "flag as inappropriate" (sends message to moderator) then you'll have a pretty sturdy system.  

This is a little stronger than trying to look for a list of bad words.  The problem with the bad word list is that instead of accepting only known good values, you're looking for known bad values and you can't think of all of them before the bad guys can.  Usually you wind up with an ad for V1AGRA to make your PEnls hard, or C1AL!S, or something like that.  The spammers have a very large vocabulary ;-)
davideo7

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Ray Paseur

I object to deleting this question.  The Twilio link posted in this response is exactly right:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28307125/How-do-I-add-a-Registration-form-that-requires-Phone-Activation-to-my-site.html?anchorAnswerId=39687384#a39687384

I know the founders and early evangelists for Twilio and I have programmed web applications using the Twilio API to do this sort of telephony.  Trust me when I say that you're better off using Twilio than trying to master the Asterisk engine.

Please get a Twilio account, follow the directions for Simple Phone Verification, then come back to this question if you still do not understand the process.  We will be glad to help you get it running, ~Ray
I started with Experts Exchange in 2004 and it's been a mainstay of my professional computing life since. It helped me launch a career as a programmer / Oracle data analyst
William Peck
Ray Paseur