# OPS-103 — A registry snapshot older than a month is not a scrub

> The national registry version used for a scrub must be no more than 31 days old at the time the message is sent.

- **Rule ID:** OPS-103
- **Layer:** Operational (`OPERATIONAL`)
- **Checks:** `registry snapshot age at send time`
- **Severity:** HIGH — Rejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
- **When it bites:** Falls due after approval, once you are live and sending
- **How it is detected:** Not knowable before submission — reported with its deadline
- **Fix type:** Wait on an external system or a required interval
- **Required by:** FCC
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/operational/ops-103/

## Why this rule exists

The registry changes daily, so a stale snapshot removes the people who registered before your download and none of the people who registered after it — and the freshness requirement exists precisely because a scrub against a year-old file looks identical in the logs to a scrub against yesterday's. The failure mode is a pipeline that downloads once and caches indefinitely because nothing ever errors.

## How to fix it

Record the registry version date on every scrub and refuse the send when it is over 31 days old rather than warning about it. Done when an out-of-date snapshot blocks a send instead of producing a log line.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
Scrub record: registry_version 2026-03-01, scrubbed_at 2026-03-04, send_at 2026-03-04 — 3 days old, allowed.
```

## Check this yourself

**Does an out-of-date registry snapshot block a send, or only produce a log line?**

1. Record the registry version date on every scrub and refuse the send when it is over 31 days old.
2. Check the refresh is scheduled and monitored — an unmonitored download that started failing silently is the usual cause.

*What wrong looks like:* The pipeline downloads once and caches indefinitely because nothing ever errors. A scrub against a year-old file looks identical in the logs to a scrub against yesterday's, and the scrub keeps reporting success throughout.

## Notes

A property of a pipeline we cannot see. What the user has to check is whether the refresh is scheduled and monitored — an unmonitored download that started failing silently is the usual cause, and the scrub keeps reporting success throughout.