# BRD-147 — A DBA used publicly must be registered on the brand

> 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.

- **Rule ID:** BRD-147
- **Layer:** Brand (`BRAND`)
- **Checks:** `brand.dba vs website and message content`
- **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 crawled website or policy page; 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:** Twilio
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-147/

## Why this rule exists

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.

## How to fix it

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 of a compliant value

```text
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
```

## Provider rejection codes

| Provider | Code | Resubmission allowed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Twilio | `30918` | yes |

## Check this yourself

**Is every trading name you use publicly — in messages, on the site — registered where your state requires a DBA to be filed?**

1. List the names a customer could see: the sender name in your texts, the name on the website header, the name on receipts.
2. For each, confirm it is either the legal name or a DBA filed with the state or county that requires it.
3. Put the name that appears in the messages in the brand's DBA field — that is the one a recipient will try to match.

*What wrong looks like:* 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.

## 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.