Free · ten minutes · no sign-up

The four-question self-check

Whether your messaging registration still describes the business it was filed for. Run it yourself. If it comes back clean you've lost ten minutes and gained something you can stop worrying about.

The four-question registration self-check David Rios · onlydavid.me

You don't have to find a mistake for this to be worth doing. These four questions don't test whether your registration is good. They test whether anyone has ever looked.

  1. What opt-in is on file for you?

    How to check: Open your registered campaign and find the consent mechanism it names. Then go to that URL yourself.

    It fails if: The page 404s, or it exists but is not the thing your customers actually use to opt in — a form built to satisfy a reviewer rather than to collect consent.

  2. Does the privacy policy on file mention SMS at all?

    How to check: Not whether you have a privacy policy. Open the one your campaign links to and search it for text messaging.

    It fails if: It never mentions SMS, or it omits the clause carriers actually look for: that mobile opt-in data and consent are not shared or sold to third parties.

  3. Do the registered sample messages resemble what you send?

    How to check: Put the samples on your filing next to your last week of real outbound traffic.

    It fails if: Different tone, different purpose, or a different audience. Your filing describes a business that isn't yours.

  4. Who submitted it, and can you produce a copy?

    How to check: Ask whoever set it up to send you what was filed. Not a screenshot of an approval — the filing.

    It fails if: Nobody can retrieve it. You don't have control of your own brand registration; you have somebody's word that it went fine.

If you couldn't answer these, that is the answer. If nobody can say what opt-in is on file, then nobody reviewed it before it went in and nobody has reviewed it since — and whatever it says has been representing you to the carriers ever since, unread. "We've never had a problem" is a statement about what you have noticed, not about what is on file. Those two come apart quietly.

Why it matters, stated honestly

Is a carrier going to audit you tomorrow? Probably not, and nobody should tell you otherwise to sell you something. The realistic trigger is ordinary maintenance — adding numbers, changing a use case, a brand re-vet — routine events that put the filing in front of a reviewer who reads it properly for the first time.

The second reason is bigger and it isn't a technical question. If a consent complaint ever lands, the registered opt-in becomes a written record of what you said your process was. A record that contradicts your actual practice is a worse position than no record at all. That one is for your attorney, not for me — but it is a specific question, and most businesses have never thought to ask it.

Why your vendor's filing probably looks like this. A platform's job ends the moment you are approved — that is when you stop being blocked and start being billable. Yours doesn't end there. You need the filing to still make sense when somebody reads it back to you, years later, with your brand on it and not theirs. Approved and defensible are different bars, and only one of them was ever being tested.

Failed one and want a second opinion? That's the normal outcome, and most of them are fixable. I'm David Rios — I do A2P/10DLC registration and caller-ID reputation work for agencies and the businesses they run numbers for.

onlydavid.me · david@onlydavid.me · (726) 999-0727

Book a call Look up an error code