# BRD-122 — A well-known brand name on a consumer mail domain reads as impersonation

> A widely recognised company name paired with a free or non-corporate email domain must be treated as probable impersonation.

- **Rule ID:** BRD-122
- **Layer:** Brand (`BRAND`)
- **Checks:** `brand.company_name + brand.email`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** AI judgement over the submitted form; External record we cannot query — reported as a warning to verify
- **Fix type:** Fix the field — a better value in the form clears it
- **Required by:** AWS, Bandwidth
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-122/

## Why this rule exists

Impersonating a bank or a retailer is the highest-value use of a fraudulent brand, and the cheapest tell is that the registrant could not produce an address on the company's own domain. Reviewers act on that tell hard, which means a franchisee or a regional reseller using a personal address gets caught in the same net — the fix for them is a real corporate address, not an explanation.

## How to fix it

Use an email address on the domain the named company actually operates. If you are a franchisee or an authorised reseller, register under your own legal entity name rather than the parent brand's, and use your own domain. Done when the name in the brand field and the domain in the email field belong to the same organisation.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
company_name: Acme Coffee Co, LLC · email: support@acmecoffee.com — not acmecoffee@gmail.com
```

## Common mistakes

- Adding a location to the name — "Acme Coffee Portland" — does not resolve it while the email domain still belongs to nobody in particular.

## Check this yourself

**If you are registering under a name a consumer would recognise, can you produce the document that authorises you to use it?**

1. Find the franchise agreement, reseller authorisation or letter of appointment that names your entity.
2. Check the email domain on the brand belongs to the same organisation as the name in the brand field.
3. No such document: register under your own legal entity name and your own domain instead.

*What wrong looks like:* A national brand name paired with a gmail.com address. A reviewer reads that as impersonation and asks for the authorisation — and adding a city to the name does not help while the domain still belongs to nobody in particular.

## Notes

Whether a name is a well-known brand, and whether this registrant is authorised to use it, both need data we do not hold. The user has to satisfy themselves that they can evidence the right to register under this name — a franchise agreement or a reseller authorisation — because a reviewer who suspects impersonation will ask for exactly that.