{
  "id": "BRD-286",
  "slug": "brd-286",
  "title": "Fabricated business details are a permanent disqualification",
  "statement": "The brand record must describe a real business; fabricated details or a known scam pattern must never be submitted.",
  "rationale": "This is the one brand finding with no remediation: a registration judged fabricated is not corrected, it is refused, and the account behind it is reviewed. The reason is that a fake brand is the entire mechanism of an SMS scam — the identity is what a consumer would use to check who texted them, so inventing it defeats the framework rather than bending it. It matters here because well-meaning placeholder data on a demo brand is indistinguishable from the real thing.",
  "layer": "BRAND",
  "layerSlug": "brand",
  "object": "the whole brand record",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "AI_FORM",
    "EXTERNAL_DATA"
  ],
  "failureClass": "HARD_STOP",
  "authorities": [
    "Twilio"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30959",
      "remediable": false
    },
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30885",
      "remediable": false
    }
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Do not submit this registration. Every field must describe a business that exists, at an address it occupies, with a website it controls. If you are testing, use a mock brand (BRD-204), which burns no fee and pollutes no duplicate-detection index.",
  "notes": "Absorbs WEB-144, which is the same prohibition detected from the other side — site details that do not match public records. Twilio treats it as ineligible for resubmission, which is why this is HARD_STOP rather than a retry. The user cannot fix a fabricated record by editing it; what they have to do is register the real business, and if they believe the finding is wrong, appeal with documentation rather than resubmitting.",
  "catalogIds": [
    "WEB-144"
  ],
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "attestation": {
    "question": "Does every field on this brand describe a business that actually exists, at an address it actually occupies, with a website it actually controls?",
    "howToCheck": [
      "Go through the record field by field and name the source of each value: the IRS letter, the lease, the DNS registrar.",
      "Any value that came from a template, a placeholder, or 'we will fix it later' must be replaced before submission, not after.",
      "Testing rather than registering? Use a mock brand — it burns no fee and pollutes no duplicate index."
    ],
    "failureLooksLike": "A demo brand with plausible filler details submitted for real. It is indistinguishable from a fraudulent registration, and the outcome is refusal without resubmission plus a review of the account behind it."
  },
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-286/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-286.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}