Make sure your TrustedForm Certificates match your leads

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 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (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? 

Why does lead matching matter?

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 that 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 Attorney 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 validate that the certificate matches the lead using our lead matching feature. 

TrustedForm Lead Matching

TrustedForm Lead Matching is a built-in feature that validates whether a lead’s contact information—specifically their phone number or email address—matches what was entered during the original form submission. This match is made using secure SHA1 hashes of the data, ensuring privacy and accuracy.

How it works:

• When a user fills out a form on a site using TrustedForm Certify, the system scans for phone numbers and email addresses using advanced pattern recognition and consent tags.
• These values are normalized (e.g., stripped of formatting or capital letters) and stored as secure hashes.
• When you receive a lead, TrustedForm checks whether the lead’s provided email or phone matches the one captured in the certificate.
• Matching can be done automatically through LeadConduit or directly via the TrustedForm API.

Benefits of lead matching

• Reduces fraud: Flags leads with mismatched info, helping you reject suspicious or non-compliant leads.
• Protects your business: Reduces legal risk by ensuring your records match what the consumer actually submitted.
• Improves trust with vendors: Enables you to hold lead sellers accountable by demanding consistent data.
• Enhances data quality: Strengthens the integrity of your lead data, leading to better ROI and cleaner pipelines.

This layer of validation transforms TrustedForm from just a compliance tool into a defense mechanism against lead fraud helping marketers, compliance teams, and data buyers make smarter, safer decisions.

Watch this short video below to see how to set it up!

Final thoughts

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, you must set this up using the operation to match leads.

Protect your business from compliance risks and bad leads by matching lead data to its TrustedForm Certificate. It ensures the certificate truly belongs to the lead, giving you more confidence in your campaigns and the partners you work with. It’s a simple yet powerful way to add another layer of trust and transparency to your lead buying process. 

Explore the power of TrustedForm now.

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