Many services say their answers come from real people. Few say how they check. We think that should be the first thing you ask, so here is how our checks work.
Heads are the people who answer questions on 50heads. Tiers tell you how strongly the person answering has been verified: Tier 1 is a verified phone, Tier 2 adds an ID and live-face check, and Tier 3 (Established) is by invitation after a record of careful answers. No check is perfect, so we use several and keep adding to them.
The problem we are solving
Paying strangers for opinions attracts three kinds of cheating. Scripts that answer at machine speed. Farms of phones run by one person. And people who are real but not paying attention. Each needs a different check, and a check is only worth having if it is costly to get round.
Check one: the phone is a real phone
When a head answers, the 50heads app asks Apple or Google for an integrity check. We reject answers from devices or app builds that fail it. The check is designed to tell us whether:
- the app is running on a genuine, physical device rather than an emulator;
- the device has not been rooted, jailbroken or tampered with;
- the app sending the answer is the one we published, unmodified.
If an answer fails, it does not count towards your result and the head is not paid. This makes it much harder to answer 50heads questions from a script on a server. It does not make it impossible, which is why the other checks below exist.
Each answer in your results carries an integrity-check reference. It shows the answer passed the check on a device, without saying whose.
Check two: one real phone number per head
To be paid, a head verifies a phone number with a code by text or WhatsApp. Virtual numbers and VoIP numbers are refused. A number can belong to one account only.
Numbers are cheap in some places, so we don't stop there. Every month, a Tier 1 head who earned in that month confirms the same number again. It takes about ten seconds for someone who still has their phone, and it makes it more costly for a farm that rotates SIM cards.
Check three: a real identity, at Tier 2
Heads who want the higher-paying Tier 2 questions pass an ID and live-face check, once. It is run by a specialist provider, not by us. The provider checks the document and checks that the face in front of the camera matches it and is live. It also keeps a face match, not the photos, to help stop one person holding two accounts.
We receive a yes or a no. The ID and face photos are deleted by the provider after its decision, within 30 days. We never see them. Tier 2 heads also get a three-second face check at random afterwards, which makes it harder to verify an account once and then hand it on.
Check four: attention
A verified person can still click without reading. So some questions have answers we already know, mixed in at random. Heads who get several of them wrong are reviewed by a person, who can move them back to warm-up questions for two weeks. Answers that arrive faster than the question could have been read are not paid, and answers that arrive in lockstep with other accounts are held back and reviewed.
What happens when we get it wrong
Automated checks make mistakes, and the people on the other end of them deserve a way out. A person decides any restriction and tells the head why in writing. Any head can appeal at any time.
A person who was not part of the decision decides appeals about an unpaid answer within 48 hours and other appeals within five business days. Either way, you get a written reply within two weeks at the latest. We publish how many appeals we receive and uphold each quarter in our transparency note.
If we remove an answer after it has counted towards your result, you get the credit back and the result is recalculated.
What we keep
We keep as little as the checks need, for as long as they need it:
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| ID and face photos | Not kept by us; the provider deletes them within 30 days |
| Face match, to stop duplicate accounts | With the provider while the account exists |
| Phone number | While the account exists, plus a scrambled copy for 12 months |
| Touch and timing signals | 90 days; summary patterns for up to 24 months |
| Answers | Never shown to the requester with a name; 50heads itself holds the verification data above |
The full detail is in our privacy notice and on how we verify.
Why publish it
Because "trust us" is not a verification method. If you can read how the checks work, you can decide whether they are good enough for your question, and you can hold us to them. Answers are anonymous to the requester. 50heads holds the phone and verification data described above.