If you are buying TrustedForm Certified leads, you understand the importance of independent lead certification. The TrustedForm Certificate provides confidence about the authenticity of the lead as well as the required documentation for prior express written consent to comply with the TCPA. However, how do you know if that certificate corresponds to that lead?  How do you know that the lead data you received was the same information that was submitted by the consumer in the form? 

If the certificate doesn’t match the lead you just purchased, you could be the victim of lead fraud, where a lead vendor misrepresents how they generated a lead. While the obvious consequence of this is you are probably buying a worthless lead, there are also much more serious consequences. If the certificate doesn’t match the lead, you also don’t have consent documentation for that lead. This means you could be liable under the TCPA for calling on that lead. That exact scenario has played out in some court cases. Per Eric Troutman on TCPAWorld.com, “The fascinating thing, of course, is to see how a single downstream affiliate…can get everyone in the funnel in huge trouble.”

Obviously this is a situation you want to avoid. So how do you protect yourself from this happening?  Fortunately there is a simple solution – automatically verify that the certificate matches the lead using our lead matching feature. 

If you are using TrustedForm within LeadConduit we do this automatically for you so you are covered. However, if you are using the TrustedForm API this has always been an optional feature (it is referred to as lead fingerprinting in the API documentation). Unfortunately there are a lot of customers that don’t take advantage of this simple feature. In our next version of the API that will be launched this year, we will make it a requirement when using the API. For current customers, we will continue to encourage you to use this feature to protect yourself.

If you have any questions, get in touch with us!