Prohibited Messaging Practices and Campaign Content

Prohibited Messaging Practices

Always avoid disingenuous sending practices. All service providers will enforce restrictions if you don’t, which could lead to the termination of your service. Here’s a list of what you should avoid.

1. Sharing, Selling, or Renting Consent

Opt-in consent must be collected directly by the same party that’s sending the message. A consumer’s consent can never be bought, sold, rented, or shared. Doing so is strictly prohibited.

2. Grey Route

Make sure you’re using an A2P compliant service that registers you, your business, and campaigns to ensure the highest deliverability, success, and protection for your business.

3. Snowshoe Sending

Snowshoe sending is a technique used to spread your messages across multiple source phone numbers to dilute reputation metrics and evade filters. If you do this, your service provider reserves the right to disable the messaging campaign as well as all future messaging campaigns.

4. Dynamic Routing 

Every number must have a single route in the delivery path to the destination phone number. If you perform dynamic routing to get around spam blocking, your service provider reserves the right to disable the messaging campaign as well as future campaigns. 

Dynamic routing to maintain service in the event of a major network outage on the service provider’s side is not prohibited. 

5. URL Redirects and Forwarding

This is when you include a URL in the message which redirects to another URL, and then another, and another, and so on. Often, this practice goes multiple layers deep which results in the end-recipients not knowing what website they’re being taken to. This can result in the immediate suspension of services.

Prohibited Campaign Content

Here’s a quick list of reminders for things you cannot send in your messaging campaigns.

1. Unlawful, Unapproved, or Illicit Content

You cannot promote unlawful, unapproved, or illicit content in your campaigns. This includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Spam
• Fraudulent or misleading messages
• Depictions or endorsements of violence
• Inappropriate content
• Profanity or hate speech
• Endorsement of illegal drugs

Your messaging must abide by all applicable federal and state laws and regulations. Additionally, your messages must be legal in all 50 states. All content must be appropriate for the intended audience. 

Additional legal and ethical obligations apply when marketing to children under age 13, and such programs might be subject to additional review by your service provider. Aggregators and Message Senders are expected to enforce restrictions on their networks to prevent onboarding these types of content. If you don’t do this, you could face:

• Suspension of sending rights for provisioned application address or campaign
• Restriction of onboarding new message campaigns
• Suspension of provisioning rights for new application address
• Suspension of all network services on the T-Mobile network

2. Disallowed Content

The following content categories are considered deceitful and nuisance campaigns, which often result in a high volume of spam complaints. If your messages hit these categories, there’s a strong chance you will run into major issues. 

High-Risk Financial Services

• Payday Loans
• Non-Direct Lenders
• Debt Collection

Debt Forgiveness

• Debt Consolidation
• Debt Reduction
• Credit Repair Programs

Illegal Substances

• Cannabis or other drugs
• Illegal Prescriptions

Work & Investment Opportunities

• Work from Home Programs
• Job Alerts from 3rd Party Recruiting Firms
• Risk Investment Opportunities

Other

• Gambling
• Any other illegal content
• The sharing or selling of collected information with third parties
• Campaign types are not in compliance with the recommendations of or prohibited by the CTIA Short Code Monitoring Handbook, Version 1.7, or later
• Campaign types not in compliance with the recommendations of or prohibited by the CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices – 2019 version

3. Phishing

This is the practice of sending messages that look and feel like they come from reputable companies. However, they trick consumers into revealing personal information like passwords or credit card numbers.

4. Fraud or Scam

Fraud or scam is defined as any message that involves wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. Often, they involved money or business transactions.

5. Deceptive Marketing

Your marketing messages must always be truthful and not misleading. When appropriate, they should also be supported by scientific evidence to meet standards held by the Federal Trade Commission's  (FTC) Truth in Advertising rules. Unfair or deceptive advertising is prohibited in any medium, including text messages.

Disclaimer: PhoneBurner’s code of conduct has been adapted from T-Mobile’s “industry standard” code of conduct for A2P SMS. Please view their full code of conduct here.