Protection: Masked numbers cannot

[john290]

If they opt-into sharing their number, Yelp assigns a temporary masked number to the customer and the business, which allows both parties to communicate seamlessly through calls, SMS, and the Yelp app. After the customer shares and enters their phone number (left), the business can call and text the customer’s masked phone number (right). Masked phone numbers provide the following benefits over calling or texting directly: Privacy: Neither party’s real phone number is shared with the other, and both can opt-out of communicating via phone calls at any time.

Protection: Masked numbers cannot be shared with third parties—only lebanon mobile phone numbers database the business can reach the customer through the masked number, and vice versa. Continuity: The full history of texts and calls is mirrored on both the app and the user’s phone, which allows for easy switching between the communication channels. The conversation history between the customer and the business is synced between the SMS messages and the Yelp messaging platform. In the next sections, we’ll take you through a high level overview of Yelp’s phone masking process, and highlight the key technical design decisions that we made in order to build consumer trust and provide the convenient benefits outlined above, while minimizing system costs and enabling the system to be scaled to Yelp’s large user base.



Integrating with a Telephony API Fortunately for us, when it comes to working with phone numbers there is no need to start from scratch. Telephony API providers make it easy to purchase phone numbers, send or receive SMS messages, and initiate or receive phone calls. Additionally, they allow a phone number’s owner to react immediately to any event that occurs on the number, like an incoming call, through sending webhooks to a custom URL and accepting a response with custom instructions on how to handle the event.