# WEB-017 — The site must not be gated by geo, bot challenge or app wall

> A geo-gate, bot challenge, captive portal, or app-install wall blocking the reviewer is rejected.

- **Rule ID:** WEB-017
- **Layer:** Website (`WEBSITE`)
- **Checks:** `brand website`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** AI judgement over the crawled website or policy page
- **Fix type:** Fix the website — no form edit clears it
- **Required by:** TCR, Twilio, Bandwidth
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/website/web-017/

## Why this rule exists

Vetting fetches from a US datacentre IP, which aggressive bot protection frequently blocks outright. The site works perfectly for customers and returns a challenge page to the reviewer, so the failure is invisible from the brand's side.

## How to fix it

Allowlist datacentre traffic for the policy and opt-in pages, or lower the bot-protection level on them. Confirm the pages load from a cloud IP, not just from your office.