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Compliance Posture FAQ

Answering the questions operators bring once they’ve read the posture map: I enabled the toggle — why is nothing blocked yet? Why did a number only on the federal DNC read back clear? What does the platform actually enforce for me, and what is mine to own? Each answer below points at the deep page that owns the topic. Read this page for the mental model; read the linked page before you build on it.
This page describes Orbit’s platform controls. It is not legal advice. Which laws apply to your traffic, and what posture is adequate, depends on your jurisdiction, your recipients, and what you send. Confirm with qualified counsel.

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Are any of these gates platform-mandatory?

No — with exactly one exception. Compliance controls are tenant-owned: Orbit gives you the control surface (gates, windows, scrubs, registries), each gated control ships off, and it enforces what you set rather than mandating a posture. The single exception is the US TCPA federal voice dialing window: campaign and dialer voice to US (+1) recipients outside the 8 AM–9 PM recipient-local window is hard-blocked (422 TCPA_FEDERAL_DIALING_WINDOW_BLOCKED) with no tenant toggle, no per-organization bypass, and no fail-open on a timezone-unresolved recipient. The 500–500–1,500 per-call statutory penalty is not the tenant’s to waive. Stricter state mini-TCPA overlays (Florida’s Sunday ban, Mississippi’s 7:30 PM close, and the Oklahoma/Louisiana/Alabama/West Virginia windows) sit on top of that federal rail and are likewise not a tenant knob. Everything else — quiet hours, DNC, RND, STIR/SHAKEN floors, HIPAA mode, DSAR, KYC gates — is yours to flip, default open. The full asymmetry list is on What is not tenant-toggleable.

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What does the compliance-health score never block?

Everything on the health surface is read-only: it reports your posture, it never changes it. GET /compliance/health (plus /health/numbers and /health/campaigns) blends consent coverage, opt-out velocity, STOP-reply rate, and carrier rejections into a 0–100 score with a ranked warnings array — it never blocks a send, suppresses a contact, or gates your traffic. Use it as an early-warning read: which sender a carrier is about to throttle, before the traffic degrades. The same rule holds for the quiet-hours preview endpoint — it answers “would this send be held?” without holding anything. See Compliance Health Scores.

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I enabled quiet hours — does that protect my campaign sends?

Yes, if either of the two knobs is set. Campaign, drip, and journey sends are evaluated against the campaign fallback window (set in Settings → Campaign limits, or PUT /api/v1/campaigns/quiet-hours/settings); if you never set one, they fall back to the platform default 21:00–09:00. For 1:1 and ad-hoc traffic, protection only exists where a channel is enabled on the org gate (settings → quiet_hours.<channel>.enabled). So “quiet hours on” must mean at least one of: a channel enabled on the org gate, or a fallback window your campaign traffic inherits. Check GET /compliance/quiet-hours/preview before a rollout to see exactly what would be held and until when. The two-knob model is on Quiet hours configuration. Note again the one platform exception above: campaign and dialer voice to US recipients is always held by the federal 8 AM–9 PM window even with both toggles off — see Send Gates.

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Is Sender-ID approval instant?

No. Registering a Sender ID in Orbit submits it into the compliance workflow, but final approval is granted by the regulator or carrier in each country — not by the platform. A country entry sits at pending (or returns rejected with a reason) until that external decision lands, and A2P SMS into a country that requires a registered Sender ID is fail-closed: blocked until that country’s entry reads approved. Plan lead time — some markets take days to weeks — and attach the country’s KYC documents up front to avoid a re-submission loop. See Sender-ID Registration and the recovery workflow on Troubleshoot a pending number or Sender ID. The same external-lead-time pattern applies to US 10DLC (brand and campaign review, 1–5 business days typical, per-carrier statuses tracked separately) and to regulated-country number purchases, which idle at pending_compliance until an approved compliance profile is attached.

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Will the DNC scrub work out of the box on SaaS?

Partially — and the gap is the operator question this FAQ exists for. The DNC chain scrubs your own layers (contact DNC flags, DNC list, suppression, consent opt-outs) plus the platform list as soon as you opt in with dnc_sync_enabled. The federal/state/TCR feed layer only backs the check once a snapshot is synced, and on the Devotel-hosted SaaS the TCR feed is only populated when the operator iconectiv TCR partner credentials (DEVOTEL_TCR_API_KEY / DEVOTEL_TCR_PARTNER_ID) are configured — if either is unset the connector no-ops and no feed arrives. Until it does, two consequences follow:
  • GET /compliance/dnc/check returns 403 DNC_SYNC_NOT_ENABLED until you opt in, and even after opting in it returns federal_feeds_synced: false on every response — a number only on the FTC federal register reads back clear in that state. Never treat a clear verdict as federal safe-harbor unless federal_feeds_synced: true.
  • GET /compliance/rnd/check degrades similarly: until the FCC feed is synced, every verdict is no_data (no safe harbor), and enabling rnd_scrub_enabled is refused with a 409 until the feed is connected.
Read the source and freshness fields on every response, and see the fail-open caveat on DNC Scrubbing and the feed configuration on 10DLC registration. On the SaaS, Orbit maintains the synced snapshots centrally once feeds are connected — you never wire your own register integration per tenant.

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Which controls fail open and which fail closed?

Condensed from the posture map — the column to internalize before you trust a toggle: The pattern: anything that protects a recipient or a regulator fails closed or is platform-level; anything that protects your own list hygiene is opt-in and fails open. The deep pages behind each row are on Send Gates.
No. Orbit is the conduit and the ledger: it carries your sends, enforces the gates you set, and keeps the auditable record (consent decisions, suppression entries, scrub results, certifications). It does not decide that a send is compliant, does not file with a regulator for you, and does not send customer notices for you. The posture you choose is additive from an open default, and the responsibility for choosing it stays yours. Confirm your obligations with qualified counsel.