{
  "id": "BRD-147",
  "slug": "brd-147",
  "title": "A DBA used publicly must be registered on the brand",
  "statement": "Any trading name the business uses publicly — on its site or in its messages — must be declared in the DBA field rather than substituted silently.",
  "rationale": "The consumer's only handle on who is texting them is the name in the message, so a name that appears there and nowhere in the registration breaks the identification the whole framework rests on. It is rarely deliberate: the messaging programme gets its own friendly name, the registration was filled in months earlier, and nobody connects the two.",
  "layer": "BRAND",
  "layerSlug": "brand",
  "object": "brand.dba vs website and message content",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "CRAWL",
    "EXTERNAL_DATA"
  ],
  "failureClass": "RETRY_FIELD",
  "authorities": [
    "Twilio"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30918",
      "remediable": true
    }
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Add the public trading name to the brand's DBA field. Where more than one name is used publicly, register the one that appears in the messages — that is the one a recipient will try to match. Done when the name a customer sees in a text can be found on the brand record.",
  "example": "dba: Acme Coffee — where the site header, the samples and the HELP reply all say \"Acme Coffee\" but the legal name is Acme Coffee Co, LLC",
  "notes": "Whether a DBA is REGISTERED with the state is EXTERNAL_DATA and out of reach; what we can see is whether a publicly used name was declared to us. The user has to confirm separately that any DBA they rely on is properly filed where their state requires it, because a reviewer who looks it up and finds nothing treats the name as invented.",
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "attestation": {
    "question": "Is every trading name you use publicly — in messages, on the site — registered where your state requires a DBA to be filed?",
    "howToCheck": [
      "List the names a customer could see: the sender name in your texts, the name on the website header, the name on receipts.",
      "For each, confirm it is either the legal name or a DBA filed with the state or county that requires it.",
      "Put the name that appears in the messages in the brand's DBA field — that is the one a recipient will try to match."
    ],
    "failureLooksLike": "The messaging programme was given a friendly name of its own. A reviewer looks the name up, finds no filing behind it, and treats it as invented."
  },
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-147/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-147.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}