# POL-252 — A sole proprietor still needs a published policy

> Policy pages must be produced for a sole-proprietor brand on the same terms as for any other entity type.

- **Rule ID:** POL-252
- **Layer:** Policy pages (`POLICY_PAGE`)
- **Checks:** `brand.entityType vs the policy generation gate`
- **Severity:** HIGH — Rejected by at least one carrier or provider, and a common cause of failure at the rest.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** Deterministic (settled in code from the submitted values)
- **Fix type:** Fix the privacy policy or SMS terms
- **Required by:** TCR, Bandwidth
- **Applies:** Applies when the brand is a sole proprietor.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/policy-page/pol-252/

## Why this rule exists

One vendor claims sole proprietors are exempt from a compliant privacy policy and another lists sole-proprietor campaigns among its own rejection categories, so acting on the exemption means betting the registration on a single unverified source. The people it would affect are the least equipped to absorb a rejection, which is why the safe reading is to generate the document anyway.

## How to fix it

Publish a privacy policy and SMS terms for the sole-proprietor brand and register both URLs, exactly as for a company. Done when the sole-proprietor campaign carries the same two links a standard campaign would.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
privacy_policy_url: https://janedoe.com/privacy · terms_and_conditions_url: https://janedoe.com/sms-terms
```

## Notes

The catalog records this as contested: Alive5 claims the exemption as a single unverified source, Bandwidth separately lists sole-proprietor campaigns as a rejection category. The exemption is treated as unproven rather than asserted either way.