{
  "id": "BRD-146",
  "slug": "brd-146",
  "title": "The DBA must be consistent with the legal name and every other field",
  "statement": "The DBA must be recognisably the same business as the legal name, the website, and the campaign — not an unrelated third name.",
  "rationale": "Reviewers use the DBA as the bridge between a legal name nobody recognises and a website that carries a brand. When the DBA is a third, unrelated name, that bridge collapses and the registration reads as three businesses stapled together — which is what an unauthorised reseller registration actually looks like. Multi-brand retailers reach this honestly by putting the group name in one field and a shopfront in another.",
  "layer": "BRAND",
  "layerSlug": "brand",
  "object": "brand.dba vs brand.company_name",
  "severity": "HIGH",
  "detectability": [
    "AI_FORM"
  ],
  "failureClass": "RETRY_FIELD",
  "authorities": [
    "AWS",
    "Bandwidth",
    "HighLevel"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30918",
      "remediable": true
    }
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Set the DBA to the name customers actually see from this brand — the one on the website header and in the message sender line. If the business genuinely trades under several names, register a separate brand per name rather than listing one and messaging under another. Done when the DBA, the website title and the name in the samples are the same business.",
  "example": "company_name: Acme Coffee Co, LLC · dba: Acme Coffee · website: acmecoffee.com — one business, three consistent renderings",
  "notes": "Bandwidth grades this MEDIUM and AWS HIGH; the strictest is kept per the strict-superset model.",
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-146/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-146.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}