Have you recently tried to verify your phone number with Snapchat, but it’s not letting you complete the process?
Whether you’re signing up for a new account or simply want to change your number, Snapchat requires that each phone number be verified with a one-time code. However, on rare occasions this doesn’t go as expected.
The two most common examples include:
- Snapchat telling you something along the lines of, “Due to suspicious activity, we cannot verify this phone number. Please request verification with another phone number.”
- Typing in the correct code to verify your phone number, but Snapchat claiming it’s incorrect, or otherwise rejecting it.
Fortunately, there are a few fixes that will allow you to successfully verify your phone number with Snapchat. In this article, we will cover all of them!
What Causes Your Phone Number To Fail Verification With Snapchat?
This issue can be incredibly frustrating, especially if you’ve been able to successfully verify your phone number with Snapchat before.
It’s important to remember that large companies like Snapchat rely heavily on automated systems. At the same time, Snapchat is full of spammers, which is why you often get Snapchat friend requests from people you don’t know.
Therefore, Snapchat employs security measures to try and stop any sort of automated or unusual signups.
If Snapchat believes that your behavior or your phone number is out of the ordinary and doesn’t reflect the way most people use their app, their systems may block you from continuing.
We’ll go over some ways we can get past this however, as most of the time there are some patterns that lead to the ‘suspicious activity’ message. Therefore, by going out of our way to appear as normal as possible to Snapchat’s systems, you should be able to continue without any problems.
How To Fix Snapchat Phone Verification Issues
There are several things we can try to successfully use your phone number with Snapchat.
Although the issue is often caused by only a single thing, we recommend looking over each of these to see if they apply to you. Failing to do even one of these things can cause Snapchat to continue blocking your phone verification, so it’s important that you follow all steps carefully.
1. Unlink Your Phone From Other Accounts
Often times, this issue is caused by your phone already being linked to another Snapchat account.
Although there are perfectly legitimate reasons to have multiple Snapchat accounts, the majority of people only have one. Therefore, it may be considered a bit unusual if you open multiple Snapchat accounts, especially if you try to use a large number from the same device.
Snapchat may falsely believe that you intend to start spamming people en masse, as bot accounts are a real problem that Snapchat is facing at the moment.
Click here to learn how to unlink your phone number from your Snapchat account.
After successfully removing your phone number from your old account, you could try signing up again for the new account with the same phone number.
This time, there is a good chance that it will go through.
2. Turn Off Your VPN If You’re Using One
If you’re using a VPN, you should turn it off- at least until you’ve fully completed the signup or login process.
VPNs work by masking your network’s IP address, making it appear like you’re in another location.
This leads to two problems.
First of all, other users of the same VPN will share the same IP address as you. This means that it’s harder to differentiate who is who – and if someone else broke Snapchat’s rules while using the VPN service, you may be tied together with them.
Secondly, it can cause Snapchat to believe that your account or phone number may have been compromised. If they have a record of your device and phone number usage being tied to your home on the west coast of the USA, it is indeed suspicious if you appear to be registering from eastern Europe due to your VPN being based there.
So, turn off your VPN until the verification process has been completed.
3. Avoid Free Texting Apps
Apps that allow you to use a free phone number for texting have been incredibly popular.
Essentially, they allow you to reserve a new phone number that’s unique to you – at least while you are using it.
Some examples include Google Voice, TextNow, and TextPlus.
However, these services have a similar issue to VPNs. Chances are, these numbers have already been used by bunches of other people.
Snapchat wants to verify that you are the true owner of your phone number, that other people won’t be able to access it. Your phone number is an important identifier that can be tied specifically to you, and nobody else.
This is important to keep your account secure.
Therefore, they may be more likely to reject phone numbers from free services, that may be reshared or reused by other people in the future.
4. Try To Keep Things Similar To Your Regular Device Usage
Many people don’t know this, but apps can track you even if you aren’t signed in.
This is because all mobile phones have unique identifiers that are accessible by app developers. Unfortunately, even tools like VPNs can’t help with this.
When attempting to verify your phone number, Snapchat may compare all available information to your previous behavior, to see if things seem normal.
Therefore, while verifying your phone number it makes sense to do things as similarly as possible to your normal usage:
- Use the same device you normally use Snapchat on.
- Sign up while located in the same city, or preferably the same exact network.
- Avoid using any sort of device emulators.
- Avoid using anything that may spoof your device information.
5. Wait
Unfortunately, sometimes all you can do is wait.
However, waiting a few hours or days may be enough for Snapchat to finally let your phone number be verified.
It could be that Snapchat is experiencing some sort of temporary bug that’s preventing your phone from verifying. Alternatively, they could simply be locking you out because you’ve already tried to verify too many times.
Either way, having a little bit of patience may allow the problem to resolve itself on its own.
Therefore, it’s worth waiting a few days before giving up and losing all hope.
6. Contact Snapchat Support
Finally, if nothing else is working you should contact Snapchat support.
For a tech company, Snapchat’s support seems to be better than average, and they should be able to help work this out for you.
You can learn how to contact Snapchat support by clicking here.
Conclusion
It’s frustrating when Snapchat fails to verify your phone number, especially when they claim it’s due to suspicious activity.
While nobody but Snapchat knows exactly how their systems work, we know this – Snapchat wants you to sign up and use their service. However, they must also balance the ease of registration, with preventing bot accounts from spamming people.
Therefore, these measures are put in place to balance that risk.
Try out some of the tips mentioned in this article, and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to verify with Snapchat, without having to use a different phone number.
Of course, if you have any questions or want to share your experience, please feel free to do so using the comment form below.
Wishing you the best,
– James McAllister
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