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12.13.24
At TextNow, we believe that access to communication should be available to everyone. It’s why we built our unlimited free talk & text service and why we keep adding more features – like free essential data – rather than taking more away.
It’s important that we make a distinction, though, that everyone doesn’t always mean everyone. We take the safety of our users – and anyone else who interacts with TextNow – very seriously. This is why we staff an entire internal Trust & Safety team dedicated to keeping our customers safe. At the helm of that team, we’re proud to announce the addition of Sean Bonawitz, our new Head of Trust & Safety at TextNow.
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Sean started his career as a US Navy EOD bomb squad leader on SEAL Team 5 before completing his MBA at MIT and joining Deloitte as a management consultant. Since then, he’s worked on Google’s Finance Operations team managing a multi-billion dollar risk management process. He later pivoted to Trust & Safety and has led T&S teams at YouTube, TikTok, and Patreon.
We had him answer some of the more pressing questions around how we keep TextNow safe and how he plans on prioritizing the team’s efforts over the next year.
What does the Trust & Safety team do?
The purpose of our Trust & Safety team is to make TextNow the safest and most trusted free phone service. We currently do that on three levels:
Limiting ‘bad actor’ access, i.e. preventing harmful users from registering and using a TextNow number.
Detecting, mitigating, and resolving abuse. One example is disabling accounts that begin engaging in new spam or scam methods.
Enabling a better experience for good customers who are trusted and valued.
What do people use a TextNow number for?
Most people use it exactly as they would any other phone number – to keep in touch with loved ones, their kids’ schools, to be reachable by current or potential employers. It’s an affordable (AKA free!) resource for communication – and yes, it’s a real phone number.
Some even use it as a second phone line for their small business or to sell items in online marketplaces.
There are the odd few who see it as a medium for spam or scams. This doesn’t just happen with our service – these users also use social media platforms, email, or other phone numbers to do the same. It’s simply the nature of running a free service, and why running a robust Trust & Safety team remains one of TextNow’s top priorities.
How does the Trust & Safety team keep bad actors away?
The team does a great job today of using systematic, algorithmic methods to detect nefarious activity, both before and after it happens. We then take the necessary actions to mitigate and resolve the abuse.
We plan on implementing the following over the next year to improve these processes:
Investing in machine learning to bolster our proactive risk detection.
Strengthening existing partnerships with third party industry leaders focused on telecom risk mitigation – we can’t do it alone!
Continuing to support law enforcement requests with our fully dedicated internal team and process.
It’s important to note that we do work closely with law enforcement as needed to assist in tracing numbers. These relationships are maintained via a court order, with legal processes that have to be followed in order to protect the privacy of our users.
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To keep TextNow open and free to everyone, we’re taking the right steps toward making sure the definition of “everyone” equals safety for everyone. Check back with us to learn more on how we’re keeping TextNow safe!
