Legal
Acceptable use policy
This document is provisional.
The company you would be contracting with is not named here yet, so treat this page as a statement of how the service is intended to work rather than as a finished agreement. It will be republished with those details before the service asks anyone to rely on it.
Virtual numbers have entirely legitimate uses: keeping a personal number off a marketing list, testing your own signup flow, registering for a service in a country you operate in. They are also attractive to people committing fraud. This policy draws the line.
Permitted
- Receiving a verification code for an account you are entitled to create.
- Testing SMS delivery in software you build or operate.
- Keeping your personal number private when a service demands one.
Prohibited
- Fraud of any kind — including creating accounts to claim signup bonuses, referral rewards or trials you are not entitled to.
- Impersonation — pretending to be another person or organisation.
- Account takeover — intercepting a code for an account that is not yours. This is the one we treat most seriously.
- Evading a ban or otherwise circumventing enforcement by another service.
- Harassment, threats, or abuse directed at anyone.
- Financial and identity services — using a rented number to open or access banking, payment, lending or government accounts.
- Anything unlawful where you are, or where the number is issued.
How this is enforced
Certain services and countries are blocked outright and cannot be purchased. Accounts showing patterns consistent with abuse may be rate limited or suspended while we look. Confirmed breaches result in closure without refund of the remaining balance, as set out in the terms of service.
Reporting abuse
If a number of ours has been used against you, contact a support address, once one is published with the number and approximate time. We keep records that let us identify the account responsible, and we act on them.