Setting up SMS Geo permissions in Twilio
Purpose of SMS Geo Permissions
Twilio supports sending SMS messages to many countries globally. While this capability provides you with a wide reach to serve your use cases, it is just as important to use the tools available to you to manage your exposure to risks such as SMS Pumping Fraud.
SMS Geo Permissions are one such tool. Configuring SMS Geo Permissions allows you to control the list of countries to which you can send SMS messages. Given the rise of fraud in the SMS ecosystem, Twilio recommends disabling destination countries your business doesn't use or uses infrequently as a line of defense against fraudulent activity.
By default a newly created account allows messages to be sent to your home country as determined by the phone number you verified during signup. You can follow the steps in the following How to change SMS Geo Permissions section to judiciously enable and disable SMS Geo Permissions by country.
Each country has its own regulatory framework governing the use of SMS messages. Regulatory provisions may differ by sender type and use case. They may include additional registration requirements and define prohibited use cases.
You are responsible for compliance with the applicable country-specific regulations. Please review the SMS Guidelines for a country before you consider enabling its SMS Geo Permissions.
Navigate to Messaging Geo Permissions settings
Ensure you are logged into the Twilio Account for which you want to change the permissions.
Navigate to Console > Messaging > Settings > Geo Permissions.
Only users with Account Owner and Account Admin profiles can modify SMS Geo Permissions.
Adjust your SMS Geo Permission settings
Find the country or region for which you want to adjust the SMS Geo Permissions. You can do so by scrolling through the displayed listing arranged by continent or using the Filter by Country input control to narrow the search.
Once you have found the country or region whose permissions you want to adjust, use the checkbox control next to its name to enable or disable it.
Filter by country control
Country checkbox
SMS Geographic Permissions generally work based on the country code of the destination phone number. However, exceptions exist for political and historical alignments and some may not map strictly to a country's political or cultural boundaries.
Save your Geo Permission changes
Press the Save geo permissions button. A dialog will open, asking for your confirmation to proceed with saving the changes.
Successful updates
If a confirmed update to the SMS Geo Permissions is successful, the success alert "Messaging geo permissions updated successfully" appears in the top right corner of the screen.
Saved changes to SMS Geo Permissions take effect immediately.
As a result, as soon as you save the changes that disable the SMS Geo Permissions for a destination region, SMS to this destination will no longer be sent.
Enabling High-Risk countries
Some countries or regions will have a High Risk marking next to their name. Twilio has assessed them to currently have the highest risk of SMS Traffic Pumping Fraud.
As conditions change, e.g. due to enforcement actions or evolving bad actor behavior, Twilio's continuous monitoring activities may lead to adjustments of its risk assessments and result in changes to which countries or regions are marked as High Risk.
Click on the High Risk marking to see a tooltip with additional information.
Now that you know which role SMS Geo Permissions play and how to manage them, check out the following information to further protect yourself from SMS-based fraud:
Read our guidance on Preventing Fraud and SMS Pumping Protection for Programmable Messaging
Explore the use of Verify and its Verify Fraud Guard feature
Follow our Anti-Fraud Developer's Guide for comprehensive guidance