I build privacy-preserving infrastructure for the messy parts of telecom and identity. VerifySMS is my answer to a market full of SMS verification services that quietly log your number, sell your data, or refuse to refund failed verifications.
I'm Serhat Dogan, a software engineer based in the United Kingdom. I founded VerifySMS in 2025 after spending years watching friends, founders, and indie developers either expose their personal phone numbers to dozens of services they didn't trust, or hand over money to SMS verification providers that refused to refund failed verifications.
My background spans native iOS engineering (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit), backend systems on Cloudflare Workers and Node.js, and direct integration with mobile network operators across Turkey, the UK, and Eastern Europe. I've shipped consumer iOS apps, written privacy-respecting SDKs, and operated SMS gateways at scale.
I read every support email myself. I write the code, design the schema, debug the worker, and answer customer questions when something breaks at 3 AM. Customers talk to a real human, not a chatbot trained on a knowledge base I never touched.
"Phone numbers became identity. That should never have happened. I built VerifySMS so people can sign up for things without trading their privacy for the privilege."
I publish what I learn. Every blog post on VerifySMS that says "we tested" was actually tested — by me, with real numbers, real services, and real money. I share methodologies. I link to source data. When I quote a number, I have a screenshot of the test that produced it.
I don't outsource content to AI farms. I use AI to draft and translate, but every word that ships under my name is read, edited, and verified by me. If you find an error, email me and I'll fix it the same day.
Original research drives everything I publish. Generic affiliate-style "Top 10 SMS Verification Services" lists are noise. I'd rather publish one comparison built on 80 actual verification attempts than ten reposts of someone else's marketing pages.
If you're a journalist, researcher, or fellow privacy engineer, I'm happy to share data, methodologies, or comment on the SMS verification space.