Restricted SMS Content and Regions

Due to a number of legal and regulatory factors, sending SMS from Iterable is subject to certain constraints. These restrictions include:

• What content you're sending
• Where you're sending content to

# Ineligible content

One important limitation with SMS messaging is the types of businesses eligible to send SMS messages on carrier networks. Carriers have created a list of certain industries and use cases that are not allowed to use SMS services.

In addition to the categories listed in Iterable's Acceptable Use Policy, content restricted from SMS messaging includes:

• Companies that buy, sell, or share consumer information
• Third-party lead generation services
• Casino apps
• Gambling
• Gambling websites
• Sports betting
• Illegal substances
• Cannabis
• CBD
• "SHAFT" content:
  • Sex
  • Hate
  • Alcohol (allowed with short codes and long codes, if proper age gating procedures are in place)
  • Firearms
  • Tobacco (allowed with short codes and long codes, if proper age gating procedures are in place)
  • Vaping
• Some financial use cases, such as:
  • High risk financial services
  • Payday loans
  • Short term high-interest loans
  • Third-party loans
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Debt collection
  • Third-party debt collection
  • Debt consolidation and reduction
  • Credit repair programs
  • Get rich quick schemes

  IMPORTANT

  Carriers closely scan all financial services traffic. “Loan”, “Lender”, and “Mortgage Rates” are all keywords that carriers may block.

It's important to note that this is a carrier decision, and not a decision made by Iterable or third-party partners.

If you aren't sure about your use case, consult with your Iterable customer success manager.

# Restricted regions

The following regions are restricted due to legal concerns and/or government sanctions. This applies to all SMS traffic for your project, including Iterable SMS, Telnyx, and Twilio senders.

Iterable doesn’t send SMS messages to phone numbers associated with these countries:

• China
• Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
• Cuba
• Ethiopia
• Iran, Islamic Republic of
• Iraq
• Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
• Lebanon
• Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
• Mali
• Myanmar
• Nicaragua
• Russian Federation
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Syrian Arab Republic
• Venezuela
• Yemen
• Zimbabwe

Iterable records a smsSendSkip event when you try to send to any of these countries.