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Sender ID Guide

What is a Sender ID? A Sender ID is the name or number that a message on your phone appears to come from when you receive it on your phone, for example a mobile number or company name. Clickatell currently provides our customers with the ability to customize the Sender ID. This is useful if customers wishes to set their mobile number in order to receive replies or so that the recipient can identify the sender. It is also useful for branding of a message by setting the Sender ID as the company's name. Customizing a Sender ID The ability to customize a Sender ID of an SMS can result in abuse by using it as a tool for spamming and spoofing. Spoofing is when a person or company masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate identity. For example, someone can spoof another person by setting the Sender ID to the number of another person. This could be used as a tool to defraud or harass, such as like luring children to a specific location or writing something malicious and have it appear to come from a particular person. To reduce the abuse and ensure the legitimate use of this feature to protect our customers, while still providing our customers with the ability to customize the Sender ID, Clickatell decided to introduce a strict registration process for the use whereby each customized Sender ID must be registered and authenticatied with Clickatell. Registration required In future, customers will be required to register a Sender ID they wish to use. The registered Sender ID will be subject to approval from Clickatell. By default the only number a customer will be able to use as a Sender ID will be the mobile number used to register their account with, as it has been verified to be the customer's number. Customers will be provided with an online interface where they can apply to register the Sender ID's they wish to use. These Sender ID's wil be case insensitive. PLEASE NOTE: This feature will only apply to network operators who support this feature. For example, customers cannot use custom Sender IDs when delivering messages to the US due to certain limitations with US network operators. For a full list of network operators that support this feature, please go to basic coverage and click on the relevant country. Please note that alpha and numeric must be supported in order to enable the Sender ID feature. If a Sender ID is used that is not approved, the Sender ID will be automatically overridden by a default number assigned by Clickatell when a message is sent. Mobile numbers will be registered in real-time. Clickatell will send the customer an activation code to their mobile phone and the customer will be required to enter this code at the relevant webpage, thereby providing us with proof that the customer has the mobile number they wish to use as a Sender ID. Names and numbers such as company names and landlines that cannot be registered in the above manner will be processed through a manual verification process that can take up to 72 hours. Customers will be required to submit a motivation through the online interface and will receive the outcome from Clickatell via an email and through the online interface. What about sub-users? A parent account will be allowed to let their sub-users use the approved Sender ID's from the parents' account. At the sub-user search result page, a link is available next to each sub-user where the Sender ID's for sub-users can be managed. Under the preferences section for each sub-user you will find an item called "Share Sender ID from parent account". This will be off by default.