Rejections

Banned and restricted content

About a 2-3 minute read. Read this before asking for a re-file if your rejection mentions any of these categories, a re-file alone won't change the result.

Some content categories aren't allowed on 10DLC, and some are allowed only with specific controls in place. These aren't "tighten the wording" rejections, they're about what the carriers will and won't carry. AgentMessage shows you the reason the carriers returned; this guide explains which categories are which and what to do. For how the reason reaches you, see How rejections work.

SHAFT, in one line

Carriers group sensitive content under SHAFT: Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, Cannabis. Within SHAFT, some categories are banned outright and some are allowed with age-gating. The difference matters.

Banned categories, not viable on 10DLC

A re-file won't help with these. The carriers will not carry the traffic.

Cannabis, CBD, and hemp-derived products

Prohibited across US carriers regardless of state legality.

The cross-contamination trap: this applies to the brand's website, not just the messaging. If a wellness business sells CBD on its site, even an appointment-reminder campaign for that business can be rejected, the review looks at the brand as a whole. If CBD is a genuine side line, removing it from the website may make a non-CBD campaign viable, but the removal has to be real because the reviewer checks the site.

Sex and explicit content

Explicitly prohibited. Not viable on 10DLC.

Hate speech

Explicitly prohibited. Not viable on 10DLC.

Gambling

Real-money wagering, sports betting, casino, and the like, is prohibited. Note that legitimate sweepstakes are not gambling, but they're a specialty use case rather than a standard one; if you need that, it's a contact-us path. Anything resembling real-money wagering will be rejected.

Lead generation and affiliate marketing

Carriers treat lead-gen and affiliate models as high spam risk. Collecting phone numbers to pass to third parties is precisely what 10DLC was built to prevent. If your business does some lead generation but also has genuine first-party messaging, register only the first-party use case, the lead-gen content can't go through 10DLC.

High-risk lending (lead-gen variant)

Short-term loans, payday-loan lead-gen, debt-relief lead-gen, and similar high-risk financial offers are prohibited. A direct lender (not a lead-gen platform) can register, but the campaign needs the direct-to-consumer lending toggle on. The banned category targets lead-gen in this space, not direct lending. See The campaign form, field by field.

Restricted categories, allowed with an age gate

Alcohol, tobacco/vape, firearms, and ammunition are not banned. You can message about them, but the brand's website needs a real age gate before the opt-in flow.

What counts as a real age gate

Reviewers look for a specific shape of age verification. It has to be:

  • A manual date-of-birth entry. A "Yes, I'm 21+ / No" button pair or a single "I'm over 21" checkbox is considered trivially defeatable and gets rejected. The visitor has to type their actual date of birth, and the page lets them through only if they're old enough.
  • Placed before the opt-in flow. The age gate has to be the first thing the visitor hits, before the phone-number field and the consent box. A gate after they've already given their information defeats the purpose.
  • Enforced server-side. A check that's bypassed by disabling scripts or deep-linking to a product page isn't enough. Direct URLs into product pages need to redirect to the gate.
  • On the actual website, not just described in the campaign. The reviewer visits your site. If they reach the opt-in form without hitting a gate, you'll be rejected even if the campaign claims a gate exists.

Age-gating is brand-level

If the brand sells an age-restricted product, the gate applies even to campaigns that aren't about that product. A bar's site lists drinks, a vape shop sells e-juice, a sporting-goods store sells ammunition, all need a gate before any opt-in, even for a plain appointment-reminder campaign. The product doesn't have to be the focus of the messaging; its presence on the brand's site is enough.

Fixing an age-gate rejection

  1. Open your site in a private/incognito window. Can you reach the opt-in form without entering a date of birth? If so, you need a gate.
  2. Add a manual date-of-birth gate covering every path to the opt-in, homepage, product pages, deep links.
  3. Test it from several entry points.
  4. Make sure the age-gated content toggle is on the campaign. Because that toggle is structural, turning it on means re-filing the campaign, AgentMessage handles that; contact support.

If you sell some age-restricted products but want to message about other things

Either add a gate to the whole site (simplest, works everywhere), or move the age-restricted products to a separate brand with its own website and EIN so your main brand's site doesn't need the gate. The second option is heavier but can make sense when the restricted products are a small side line.

Adjacent content that's usually fine

  • Sexual-health / medical content from a legitimate provider, generally fine if it's clearly framed as healthcare, not entertainment. Be specific.
  • Cannabis-adjacent products with no cannabis (paraphernalia retail, hemp-fiber goods), a gray area; carriers sometimes still reject. Be explicit on the site that no THC or CBD product is sold.
  • Firearms training or safety classes (not sales), often acceptable with an age gate.
  • Wine clubs and craft breweries, alcohol, so they need an age gate; not banned.

If you think the rejection is wrong

Automated review sometimes catches a false positive, an old blog post, a discontinued product line, a third-party widget showing related ads.

  1. Check your website carefully. Reviewers often find things the owner forgot existed.
  2. Remove or fix the offending content if you find it.
  3. Contact support with what changed. We can sometimes escalate a genuinely incorrect rejection for human review, but only after you've cleaned up your side first.

Why carriers do this

10DLC exists to give carriers an approved framework for high-volume business messaging. To protect it, certain categories are off-limits, for regulatory reasons (cannabis, gambling), for historically high spam risk (lead-gen, affiliate marketing), and for consumer protection (hate speech, sex content). These rules come from the carriers and the CTIA, not from AgentMessage, and we can't grant exceptions.

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