What counts as consent under the TCPA?
It depends on the message. Marketing texts sent with automated systems require prior express written consent: a clear disclosure the person affirmatively agreed to, with records to prove it. Informational texts need express consent, which can be as simple as the person providing their number for that purpose. Since April 11, 2025, recipients can revoke consent by any reasonable means, and you have at most 10 business days to honor it.
The written-consent standard is stricter than most teams assume: a checkbox pre-ticked by default does not qualify, and neither does a number scraped from a website. What qualifies is an affirmative act tied to a disclosure that names who will text and about what, kept somewhere you can produce later. If you cannot show when and how a contact consented, treat the consent as absent.
Revocation is where enforcement actually bites. The FCC's 2025 rules say a recipient can opt out in plain language, not just by the word STOP, and honoring it slowly is a violation even if the original consent was clean. Automated opt-out handling exists precisely so the 10-day ceiling never gets tested.
The operator's guide to consent records, quiet hours, logging, and the per-text damages that make this worth doing properly is the TCPA compliance guide. General information, not legal advice.
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