# CON-072 — An alternative to SMS must exist where the service needs to reach the consumer

> A programme must not make receiving text messages the only way to sign up or to be served, with no other channel offered.

- **Rule ID:** CON-072
- **Layer:** Consent flow (`CONSENT_FLOW`)
- **Checks:** `signup flow alternatives`
- **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
- **Fix type:** Fix the website — no form edit clears it
- **Required by:** AWS, FCC, Twilio
- **Applies:** Applies when the use case is NOT TWO_FACTOR_AUTH, SECURITY_ALERT and FRAUD_ALERT.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/consent-flow/con-072/

## Why this rule exists

A consumer who must accept texts because the confirmation, the code or the receipt arrives no other way has not chosen SMS — they have chosen the service. The defect is invisible to the usual checks because there is often no consent control to mark optional: the coercion lives in the product design rather than in the form, and the brand reads their own flow as "we just text people their booking".

## How to fix it

Offer at least one non-SMS route to the same outcome — email the confirmation, show it on screen, or let the customer pick a channel — and say so where the number is collected. Done when a customer who never gives a mobile number can still complete the signup and receive whatever the text would have carried.

## Common mistakes

- Offering an alternative that is worse on purpose ("email delivery may take up to 5 days") is the same coercion with a fig leaf, and reads that way to a reviewer.
- A 2FA or fraud-alert programme genuinely has no alternative channel — those use cases are excluded from this rule rather than argued out of it.