Messaging Policy

Version 1.1 · published 13 August 2026

What this document covers

Segmentic is a tool the customer uses to send messages to its own audience. The contact list belongs to the customer, the customer writes the message, and the customer decides when to send. Our part is delivery.

There is one case where the roles are reversed, and it is better said at the start: when the recipient is the customer's own dashboard user and the sender is us. The getting-started guidance, the notice that a trial is ending and a plan suggestion are all of that kind. We send those, so we are the sender's identity in them and the responsibility for them is ours rather than the customer's. The same rules in this document govern them, including quiet hours, frequency caps and a way to opt out, and the opt-out is described in the privacy policy. None of them is operational: a login code, a password reset and an outage notice travel the direct path rather than this engine.

That division of labour is also a division of legal responsibility, and most of it sits with the customer. This document sets out what that responsibility is, what cannot be sent, and what happens if it is sent anyway.

Accepting this document is a condition of enabling the first sending channel. Anyone who only reads reports and analytics and sends nothing does not need to accept it.

Article 1Prior consent is a condition of sending

Bulk SMS in Iran runs on a prior consent regime, not a later opt-out regime. Resolution No. 3 of session 270 of the Communications Regulatory Commission, titled "Regulations governing the provision of SMS content services", prohibits the sending of any bulk SMS, whether promotional, informational or value added, without the subscriber's prior permission.

The customer therefore warrants that it has obtained consent for every number it uploads to the platform, and that it can show where that consent came from. An acceptable source means the person's own signup, a purchase, a contract, or written consent.

A purchased list, a list scraped from a website or a social network, and a list whose origin is unknown are not acceptable sources.

تبصره 1: The burden of proving consent lies with the customer. The platform records the source and the time of consent for each contact, and if a complaint is made, that record is what counts.

Article 2The opt-out path, which we add ourselves

Since the summer of 1402 (2023) the regulator has required an opt-out phrase at the end of the message: "لغو 11", meaning cancel 11. A recipient who sends 11 back to the same sender number stops receiving messages from that number, and 12 starts them again.

The platform appends this phrase to marketing messages itself. It is not a setting that can be turned off.

Three things the customer should know:

  • The characters of the phrase count towards the length of the message and

towards the number of SMS segments, so they affect cost.

  • An opt-out is recorded both at the operator and in our own database. That

means the contact will not receive marketing messages again even if the sender number changes later.

  • Separately from this, any subscriber can switch off all promotional SMS with

the `*800#` short code. Subscribers who have done so make up the operator's blacklist, and a marketing line does not reach them at all.

Article 3Content that cannot be sent

The list below is drawn from the published rules of Iranian SMS gateways. It is the floor, not the ceiling. Sending any of it is a violation and is stopped at once:

  • promotion of betting or lotteries
  • announcing a prize or a win that is not real
  • asking for a card number, a PIN or any banking detail
  • posing as a bank, the police, a government body or any other institution
  • content contrary to public morals, insults, threats
  • political messaging
  • promotion of tools for bypassing internet filtering
  • medicines, supplements and medical services without Ministry of Health

authorisation

  • loans and credit facilities without authorisation
  • tobacco

Article 4Rules that come from statute

Several duties come straight from the Electronic Commerce Act 1382 and have nothing to do with gateway rules:

  • **The sender's identity must be clear.** Article 53 requires that in

advertising and marketing, the identity of the person or business the advertising benefits be clear and explicit, and article 54 prohibits concealing that identity. Every message must therefore carry the name of the brand that benefits from it. Sending anonymously, or under another brand's name, is prohibited.

  • **Misleading claims are prohibited.** Article 50 prohibits any act or

omission that misleads the recipient as to quantity or quality, and article 52 requires the information to be understood accurately and clearly. Invented discounts, fake countdowns and numbers with nothing behind them are exactly this.

  • **Children are not an advertising target.** Article 57 leaves advertising

and marketing aimed at those below the legal age to a regulation that is still to be issued. Until that regulation is clear, the platform does not allow a commercial campaign to be targeted at people under eighteen.

  • **Persistent harassment is a criminal offence.** Article 641 of the Islamic

Penal Code (the Ta'zirat book, which covers discretionary offences) provides fifteen days to three months of imprisonment for causing harassment by telephone or other telecommunication devices. This is why the platform enforces a frequency cap, and the cap is not merely a matter of user experience.

Article 5Data you cannot build a segment on

This is the most important article in this document.

Article 58 of the Electronic Commerce Act 1382 prohibits storing, processing and distributing personal data concerning ethnic or racial origin, ideological views, religion, moral characteristics, and physical, mental or sexual condition, without the explicit consent of the person concerned. Article 71 of the same Act makes a breach a criminal offence carrying one to three years of imprisonment, not a fine.

These attributes therefore cannot be stored on a contact profile and cannot be used to build a segment:

  • ethnicity and race
  • political and ideological views
  • religion
  • physical and mental health
  • sexual orientation

تبصره 2: This prohibition is enforced in the platform itself and is not merely a sentence in this document. If a customer uploads such an attribute under a different name, the responsibility is entirely the customer's.

Article 6A service line and a marketing line are not the same thing

A service line carries transactional messages: verification codes, order status, notices to somebody who signed up for the service. SMS gateways expressly prohibit sending promotional content from a service line, and a breach removes the sender number from the whitelist.

The platform separates transactional messages from marketing messages strictly and picks the line itself. A customer cannot send a discount campaign on a service line, even if it wants to.

تبصره 3: Bulk sending from a personal SIM card is prohibited under the resolution of the Communications Regulatory Commission. The platform supports no sending route other than an official sender number.

Article 7Sending hours

The default window for marketing sends is 09:00 to 21:00.

This is a product rule, not a legal requirement. We found no published resolution prohibiting any particular time range for promotional SMS, and many commercial guides describe such a range as "prohibited" without citing a provision at all. We set this window for quality and to reduce complaints, and we describe it as exactly that.

The customer can change the window. That decision is recorded and kept.

Article 8Push notifications

Iran has no separate communications regulation for push. The remit of the Communications Regulatory Authority is the communications network, SMS and calls, and push, which travels over the internet from the application's own server, falls outside it.

The advertising and personal data provisions of the Electronic Commerce Act 1382, articles 50 to 59, and article 641 of the Islamic Penal Code are not tied to any medium, and on our reading they apply to push as well. So the rules above on sender identity, misleading claims, sensitive data, opt-out and frequency caps apply to push too.

App store rules are separate and binding. Cafe Bazaar prohibits the use of push for advertising and permits push only for communication related to the application's own function. Complying with those rules is the customer's job, because the application is the customer's.

Article 9Recipient complaints

A complaint about a promotional SMS is filed through the 195 system, and the body that hears it is the Committee for Handling Violations by Communications Licence Holders. Repeated complaints against one sender number lead to that line being blocked.

Because more than one customer may sit on a single sender number, the behaviour of one customer can burn the line for the rest. The platform therefore applies an internal complaint rate threshold and automatically stops any campaign that crosses it.

Article 10If this policy is breached

Three steps, in order of severity:

  1. **Stopping the campaign.** Immediately and without prior notice, where a

send is in progress and the breach is clear.

  1. **Suspending the sending channel.** With written notice, until the customer

removes the cause.

  1. **Termination.** For a serious or repeated breach, under the termination

article of the contract.

A campaign stopped for breach of this policy is not a service level breach, and no service credit is due for it.

تبصره 4: Where a legal authority demands it, information about a send is provided to that authority.

Article 11Whose sender account the messages leave on

Messages go out on the customer's own gateway account and sender number. The customer contracts with the gateway directly and Segmentic simply uses those credentials.

Three practical consequences: obtaining and paying for the sender number is the customer's, that gateway's own published rules bind the customer alongside this policy, and a complaint lands on the customer's own number rather than on one shared with anybody else.

تبصره 5: Until Segmentic holds a service sender number of its own, sending on the customer's line is the only available route. If a shared number is added later, this article and the liability article are rewritten and re-announced before it takes effect.

Article 12Liability

The customer owns the contact list and owns the content of the message, and answers for any claim, complaint, fine or judicial proceeding arising out of the messages it sends. Segmentic is a technical intermediary for sending.

The customer undertakes to make good any loss, fine and cost of defence incurred on this account.

تبصره 6: In its advertising provisions the Electronic Commerce Act 1382 places the duty on the "supplier". A supplier under that Act is the party that sells the goods or the service, which is the customer, and not the tool through which the message is sent.

Article 13Changes to this document

Any change to this document is notified at least 60 days before it takes effect. If a change alters the customer's obligations, acceptance is required again, and continued use on its own does not count as acceptance.

Language of this document

The Persian version of this document is the authoritative one. This English text is a translation provided for convenience. Where the two differ in meaning, the Persian version prevails.

Contact

Questions about this document: support@segmentic.net

Kargostaran Nasl Javan Bakhtar https://segmentic.net