A Terms of Service link must sit at the point of consent
The requirementstatement
A link to the Terms of Service must be present beside the opt-in control, not only in the page footer.
- Severityseverity
- HighHIGHRejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- consent surface
- Where it liveslayer
- Consent flowCONSENT_FLOW
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- AI · crawlCRAWLAI · visionVISION
- Needs your live site or policy page fetched and read. Ekas crawls it the way a reviewer would. Needs the pixels: a screenshot of the opt-in surface, a scanned paper form, an MMS attachment.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Fix the websiteTERMINAL_WEBSITE
- The fix lives on your site. No amount of rewording the form clears it.
- Who requires itauthorities
- CTIATCRTwilio
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies when consent was collected by web form, checkout, account settings, third party, chat, social and email.
Why this rule existsrationale
The terms are where the full program description lives, and CTIA requires them to be reachable from the initial call to action rather than hunted for. A footer link at the bottom of a long checkout page is not, in practice, available at the moment of decision.
How to fix itremediation
Add a Terms of Service hyperlink inside or immediately beneath the consent sentence, next to the checkbox. Keep the footer link as well — this is in addition to it, not instead of it.
A compliant exampleexample
By checking this box you agree to Acme Coffee's <a href="/terms">Terms of Service</a> and <a href="/privacy">Privacy Policy</a>.
Rules you will hit next
6 other rules read consent surface. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.
CON-043A mandatory phone field needs its own separate, optional SMS opt-inBlockingBLOCKINGCON-108The disclosure must be on the same page as the phone-number fieldBlockingBLOCKINGCON-AGE-GATEAge-gated programs require real age verification at opt-inBlockingBLOCKINGCON-BOX-BUNDLEDMessaging consent must be separate from terms acceptanceBlockingBLOCKINGCON-BOX-PRESENTAn explicit affirmative opt-in control must existBlockingBLOCKINGCON-BOX-UNCHECKEDThe consent control must be unchecked by defaultBlockingBLOCKING
CON-DISC-TERMS-LINK is one of 101 consent flow rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.