Text messaging

Ringfully sends and receives SMS on your own numbers. Messages arrive in a shared inbox for the organization rather than a personal one, threaded by the other party’s number, so a conversation survives the agent who started it being away. A call flow can also send a message — a confirmation, a link, a callback notice.

You are the sender. Whether you were entitled to send a particular message is your responsibility, and the two regimes that will decide it are:

Canada — anti-spam legislation

A commercial electronic message needs consent, express or implied. It must identify you, give a way to reach you, and carry an unsubscribe mechanism that works for at least sixty days. Penalties run to millions of dollars, and directors can be personally liable.

United States — telephone consumer protection rules

Marketing texts need prior express written consent. A withdrawal of consent has to be honoured across every channel, and the outside limit for acting on one is ten business days. Statutory damages are per message, which is what makes a list problem expensive rather than embarrassing.

Transactional messages to someone you are already dealing with sit differently from marketing to a list. If you are not sure which one you are sending, you are probably sending the second.

Ringfully does not detect opt-out keywords. A reply of STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE or anything similar arrives in your inbox as an ordinary message and nothing else happens.

There is:

1. no automatic suppression when someone replies STOP;
2. no suppression list, so nothing stops a later message to the same number;
3. no consent field on a contact, so nothing records that consent was ever obtained; and
4. no automatic confirmation reply.

Your mobile carrier may apply its own keyword handling at the network level for some number types. We neither rely on that nor record it, so you cannot assume it, and we hold no record of who has opted out.

What this means for you. If you send anything commercial, you have to operate opt-out yourself: watch replies, act on them promptly, and keep your own record of who asked to stop and when. If that is not something you can do reliably, do not use Ringfully for commercial messaging. Transactional replies to a customer who contacted you first are a different matter.

North American carriers filter application-to-person messaging that is not registered under their brand-and-campaign scheme.

Ringfully is not registered for 10DLC, and has not implemented STIR/SHAKEN call attestation. Two consequences you will actually notice:

1. Messages may be delayed, filtered or dropped by a carrier with no error returned to us and nothing shown to you. The message will look sent.
2. Outbound calls may be displayed on the recipient’s handset as suspected spam, regardless of who is calling or why.

Neither is a fault in the software and neither is something we can fix from our side. Registration takes weeks and is planned. We do not warrant delivery of any message.

When an unrecognised number calls you or you call it, the system creates a contact record so the next call shows a name instead of digits. That is a record of your own communications. It is not evidence that the person consented to hear from you, and treating the contact list as a list to message is a decision you are making — and answering for.

Nothing unlawful; nothing to a number that has asked you to stop; no bulk unsolicited messaging; nothing designed to disguise who it is from; and nothing in the categories carriers block outright, which in North America generally covers high-interest lending, cannabis, firearms and gambling regardless of local legality.

The acceptable use policy covers the rest and applies to messaging as much as to calling. Breach it and we may suspend messaging on the account without notice, because a carrier can otherwise block traffic for every customer we have.

Write to [TBD].