Carrier approval is not legal cover

JSONMarkdown

The requirementstatement

Litigation exposure must be sized separately for state regimes with a private right of action, and carrier approval must not be treated as legal compliance.

Severityseverity
LowLOWBest practice. Worth fixing, rarely fatal on its own.
When it bitesphase
After you are livepostFalls due once you are sending: STOP handling, quiet hours, suppression, record retention.
What is checkedobject
compliance posture and risk model
Where it liveslayer
OperationalOPERATIONAL
How Ekas settles itdetectability
Human checkHUMAN
Only someone holding the document or making the call can settle it. Ekas tells you exactly what to look at.
What the fix involvesfailureClass
Wait on someone elseTERMINAL_EXTERNAL
Needs an external system or a waiting period, such as IRS propagation, a vetting result, or a carrier queue.
Who requires itauthorities
state law (GA, WA and others)courts
When it appliesapplicabilityText
Applies to every 10DLC registration.

Why this rule existsrationale

The two systems are decided by different bodies against different standards: carriers decide whether traffic is carried, courts decide whether it was lawful, and an approved campaign is routinely both. States with private rights of action and statutory damages per message turn a modest programme into a material liability, and the approval that arrived first is not evidence of anything in that forum.

How to fix itremediation

Size the exposure per state — messages sent, statutory damages, class exposure — and treat that as the compliance driver rather than the carrier verdict. Done when somebody can state the worst-case number for the states you message into.

Check this yourselfattestation

No tool can settle this one for you. Here is the check, and what wrong looks like.

Can somebody state the worst-case statutory-damages number for the states you message into?

  1. 1Size the exposure per state: messages sent, statutory damages per message, class exposure.
  2. 2Get legal advice on the states you reach, and keep that conversation separate from anything about registration.
  3. 3Treat that number as the compliance driver rather than the carrier verdict.

What wrong looks like: Carriers decide whether traffic is carried and courts decide whether it was lawful. An approved campaign is routinely both, and approval feels like permission when it is not.

Notesnotes

A legal assessment rather than a check. What the user has to do is get advice on the states they reach, and separate that conversation from anything about registration — the two get conflated because approval feels like permission and is not.

Rules you will hit next

Other operational rules at the same severity. A registration is judged as a whole, not rule by rule.

OPS-055Revoke-all across categories has a deadlineLowLOWOPS-096A state may black out whole daysLowLOWOPS-131A validity period shorter than the queue drops messages silentlyLowLOWOPS-146Identical bodies across a bulk send fingerprint the campaignLowLOWOPS-208The consent record should carry the browser user agentLowLOW

All operational rules

OPS-116 is one of 139 operational rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.

Reading the rules is the easy part.

Ekas runs every rule that gates approval, 823 of these 915, against your registration before it reaches the carrier. It reads your site, your policy pages and your opt-in the way a reviewer would, and hands you the fix, not just the verdict.

Talk to UsHow 10DLC works