# BRD-158 — Social profiles corroborate a brand that is otherwise thin

> Social-media profile URLs should be supplied to strengthen brand verification.

- **Rule ID:** BRD-158
- **Layer:** Brand (`BRAND`)
- **Checks:** `brand.social_profiles`
- **Severity:** LOW — Best practice. Worth fixing, rarely fatal on its own.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** Deterministic (settled in code from the submitted values)
- **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-158/

## Why this rule exists

Vetting scores partly on how much independent evidence exists that the business is real and has a history, and social profiles are the cheapest such evidence to supply — an account with years of posts corroborates a company far better than a website registered last month. Nothing rejects a brand for omitting them, which is why almost everyone does, including the businesses whose score most needed the help.

## How to fix it

Add the business's own profile URLs — the ones with real posting history, not a placeholder account created this week. Two or three established profiles are worth more than five empty ones. Done when the profiles are populated and each opens to the business.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
social_profiles: ["https://www.linkedin.com/company/acme-coffee", "https://instagram.com/acmecoffee"]
```

## Provider rejection codes

| Provider | Code | Resubmission allowed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Twilio | `30799` | yes |

## Notes

Advisory rather than a rejection, which is why it is LOW and why an empty field PASSES with the advice attached rather than failing: nothing is wrong with a registration that omits it, and failing one would be a false positive on every compliant brand. The rule fails only on URLs that are supplied and unusable. It earns its place because it is one of the very few ways a business can raise a trust score by supplying information rather than by paying for a vet.