{
  "id": "MSG-171",
  "slug": "msg-171",
  "title": "Messages must not harass, intimidate or threaten the recipient",
  "statement": "Message content must not be designed to harass, bully or intimidate the person receiving it, and must not threaten them.",
  "rationale": "This is hostility pointed at the individual holding the phone rather than at a group, and it is the shape complaints arrive in most often — the recipient reports the message because it frightened them, not because it offended them. Honest businesses land here through pressure copy and enforcement language: escalating reminders, \"final warning\", \"we will be forced to take action\", each of which reads as a threat on a small screen with no context around it. AT&T states it plainly — message content that deceives or threatens consumers is not permitted — and there is no volume threshold below which it is tolerated.",
  "layer": "MESSAGE_CONTENT",
  "layerSlug": "message-content",
  "object": "campaign.sample[]",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "AI_FORM"
  ],
  "failureClass": "HARD_STOP",
  "authorities": [
    "Twilio",
    "CTIA",
    "AT&T"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30954",
      "remediable": false,
      "generation": "gen2"
    }
  ],
  "applicabilityText": "Applies to every 10DLC registration.",
  "universal": true,
  "remediation": "Rewrite the copy to state the position and the recipient's options neutrally, and delete anything that predicts a consequence in order to frighten rather than to inform. A message that says what is owed, by when, and how to resolve it carries the same information without the pressure — and if the programme genuinely depends on the pressure, it is not registrable.",
  "pitfalls": [
    "Softening the wording while keeping an escalating cadence does not settle this: repetition aimed at wearing the recipient down is itself the harassment, and the samples are read as a sequence."
  ],
  "catalogIds": [
    "MSG-172"
  ],
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-171/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-171.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}