We're currently doing a lead generation campaign for one of our sites, and are looking at services that provide address validation... Objective: Test if phone number belongs to address OR at least close... Ideally, it would lookup name and see if that actually matches phone lookup and/or address for that person (or at least last name the same). Does anyone know of an open-source system that could do it? Alternative would be to use a IP to Geo database and confirm general location... Then could it be possible to do a phone lookup using Yahoo people search or melissadata or someone and try to comfirm any of the data? Ideas? Thanks!
The 'general' location is going to be the best you get. If you want to be any more precise than a country you'll have a very high error rate. You may get better results with some subscription databases but would this fit in with the open source idea? I suspect the best you'll be able to do is confirm that their area code matches the location of the address. You could query some sort of directory listing but what if they are not listed? What is it you actually want to confirm? Is it the phone number or the address? Have you considered credit checks? I don't know what they are like in the US but in the UK there are some fairly advanced services available to confirm identities.