# What your opt-in form must say.

URL: https://callhush.com/compliance/what-your-opt-in-form-must-say
Last updated: 2026-07-27

The registration form is the load-bearing artifact of the whole arrangement. What the regulation's definition of prior express written consent contains, the six things a form has to do, why the seller named on the form matters, and what has to be retrievable when someone asks you to prove it. Not legal advice.

**Under 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9), prior express written consent means an agreement in writing, bearing the signature of the person called, that clearly authorises the seller to deliver advertisements or telemarketing messages using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, and that identifies the telephone number to which they may be delivered.** It must carry a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the signer authorises those calls and is not required to sign as a condition of purchasing anything.

Your registration page is where all of that either exists or does not. It is the single artifact the whole arrangement rests on, it belongs to you rather than to any service provider, and it is the thing a plaintiff's attorney asks for first.

> **This is not legal advice:** What follows describes what named regulations require, with links so you can read them yourself. It is not a legal opinion and it does not assess your form, your records or your list. It also does not contain a clause to copy: a consent sentence has to be drafted against your own entity, your own offer and your own jurisdictions, by a lawyer, not lifted from a vendor page.

## Does a webinar registration count as prior express written consent?

Not by itself, and that is the whole answer people keep hoping to avoid. A phone number typed into a field is a phone number typed into a field. Prior express written consent is an *agreement*, and the regulation lists what the agreement has to contain [in five mandatory elements](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200): it is in writing, it bears the signature of the person called, it clearly and conspicuously authorises telemarketing calls using an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice, it states that signing is not a condition of purchase, and it identifies the number.

The good news is that none of that requires paper. Subparagraph (f)(9)(ii) says the term signature *“shall include an electronic or digital form of signature”* where valid under applicable federal or state contract law, and the E-SIGN Act provides that a [“signature, contract, or other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form”](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/7001). A checkbox on a submitted form can be a signature. A checkbox that was already ticked when the page loaded cannot, because nothing was signed.

- **5 elements**: Writing, signature, authorisation of autodialed or artificial-voice telemarketing, not-a-condition-of-purchase, and the telephone number (Source: [47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200))
- **10 business days**: The outer limit for honouring a revocation made in any reasonable manner (Source: [47 CFR § 64.1200(a)(10)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200))
- **5 years**: How long a do-not-call request must be honoured from the time it is made (Source: [47 CFR § 64.1200(d)(6)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200))

## “What does my registration form need to say? Will you put that in writing?”

Six things, and they are where forms actually fail: not on the absence of a checkbox, which everybody remembers, but on the state of it, the wording next to it, the name inside it and the record behind it.

1. **Not be pre-checked**: A box ticked on page load is not an affirmative act by the person called, and a signature is precisely an affirmative act. This is the single most common defect and it is also the cheapest to avoid.
2. **Be clear and conspicuous**: 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9)(i) requires the disclosure to be clear and conspicuous. Text placed next to the phone field and the submit button reads as clear and conspicuous; the same text three clicks away inside a terms-of-service link does not.
3. **State that consent is not a condition of purchase**: Subparagraph (f)(9)(i)(B) requires the disclosure to say the person is not required to sign, directly or indirectly, as a condition of purchasing anything. Note 'indirectly': gating the join link behind the checkbox makes consent a condition even if the form technically submits.
4. **Name the specific seller**: The FTC's rule requires an express written agreement evidencing willingness to receive calls from a specific named seller, and consent runs to that named entity. A registrant who consented to one company has not consented to another, which is why consent is captured per client in the client's own legal name and can never be pooled, shared or inherited across clients.
5. **Name artificial voice: and, sensibly, AI**: The regulation's own language turns on an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, so consent that mentions only 'calls' leaves an argument open. No adopted federal rule requires the words 'artificial intelligence' today; FCC 24-84 proposes it and several states legislate around it. Including it costs a sentence.
6. **Retain the proof, in a form you can render later**: The consent text exactly as displayed and its version, the timestamp, the IP, the user agent, the page URL, the affirmative checkbox state, the number as entered and the seller named. Defendants lose these cases on records rather than on the absence of a checkbox, and the burden of proving consent sits on the caller.

> **What we will and will not put in writing:** We will give you this as a written checklist against your own registration page, name where each element comes from, and tell you which of them your current form does not appear to address. We will not draft your consent clause and we will not tell you your form is compliant. That is a lawyer's signature, not a vendor's.

## Whose name goes on the form: yours, or your service provider’s?

Yours. This is the constraint that shapes everything about how a multi-client operation can be run, and it is the one most people discover late. Consent runs to the entity named on the form. A registrant who consented to one coach has not consented to a service provider in the abstract, and has certainly not consented to a second coach whose webinar they never heard of.

The FTC's rule states it directly for prerecorded telemarketing: the express written agreement has to [evidence willingness to receive calls from a specific named seller](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/310.4), and carry the recipient's number and signature. The FCC's do-not-call exception is built the same way: it turns on prior express invitation or permission [“evidenced by a signed, written agreement between the consumer and seller which states that the consumer agrees to be contacted by this seller”](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200) and includes the number.

> **One vacated rule that people misread as permission:** The FCC's one-to-one consent rule was vacated in *Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC*, No. 24-10277 (11th Cir. Jan. 24, 2025), which granted the petition for review and vacated that part of the 2023 order. That removed a federal overlay; it did not turn a form naming “us and our marketing partners” into a good document. The FTC requirement above is untouched by it, state law does not follow a federal vacatur, and a form naming one specific company is trivially defensible in a way that a shared one is not. [Read the opinion](https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202410277.pdf).

*Each element, where it comes from, and the failure that maps to it*

| What the form has to do | Source | How forms fail it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Be in writing and bear a signature | 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9), (f)(9)(ii); E-SIGN, 15 U.S.C. § 7001(a) | A phone field with no agreement attached to it |
| Be affirmative rather than pre-checked | The signature element of (f)(9) | Ticked on page load to save the visitor a click |
| Authorise autodialed or artificial-voice marketing calls and texts, clearly and conspicuously | 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9)(i)(A) | “We may contact you from time to time”, or the disclosure buried in a linked policy |
| State that consent is not a condition of purchase | 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9)(i)(B) | The join link gated behind the checkbox, which makes it a condition indirectly |
| Name the specific seller | 16 CFR § 310.4(b)(1)(v); 47 CFR § 64.1200(c)(2) | “Us and our marketing partners”, or the agency's name instead of the client's |
| Identify the telephone number the consent applies to | 47 CFR § 64.1200(f)(9) | Consent captured against one number, calls placed to another one found later |
| Name text messages as well as calls | 47 CFR § 64.1200(a)(2) | A voice-only consent used to justify the text thread |
| Address artificial voice, and sensibly AI | FCC 24-17 ¶5 (AI is inside “artificial voice”); FCC 24-84 proposes explicit AI language; Cal. Pub. Util. Code § 2874 requires the announcement to disclose an artificial voice | Silence today, then retrofitting disclosure into a live script fleet later |

## “Do you handle calling hours in the registrant’s time zone, not mine?”

Quiet hours are measured [“before the hour of 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. (local time at the called party's location)”](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200), and the FTC's rule sets the same window. The operative words are *the called party's location*: not your office, and not the area code, which has drifted a long way from geography since number portability.

So the form does a second job people rarely notice: capturing the browser time zone at registration gives a far better signal than an area-code lookup, costs nothing, and is the difference between a defensible dialling window and a guess. Where the two disagree, the more restrictive one is the safe one, and the check belongs at the moment the call is placed rather than when the list was built.

> **A scheduling consequence, not a legal one:** An evening webinar on the west coast can put a good part of an east-coast registrant list outside the lawful window for anything that happens during or straight after the session. That is an arithmetic problem with your schedule rather than a problem with your consent, and it is better solved before the invitations go out than after.

## “Having them opting out with you doesn’t work”: what does an opt-out have to reach?

That line was written to a small-business owner describing a lawsuit, and it means something narrower and more useful than it first appears: [an internal opt-out list does not substitute for the National Do Not Call Registry](https://old.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1ufu3h7/has_anyone_dealt_with_aggressive_tcpa_lawsuits/). They are different obligations and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

The revocation rules then widen the target. A revocation may be made in any reasonable manner, the request must be [“honored within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt”](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/64.1200), and no caller may designate one exclusive channel for it. A conversational text thread makes this harder, not easier, because opt-outs arrive as sentences rather than as keywords: which is why detecting revocation intent in ordinary prose is a compliance control rather than a feature, and why the correct behaviour on detecting it is to acknowledge and stop rather than to answer back.

- **Feb 2024**: The FCC confirms an AI-generated human-sounding voice is an artificial voice under the TCPA (FCC 24-17) (Source: [FCC 24-17, Declaratory Ruling](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-17A1.txt))
- **Aug 2024**: The FCC proposes, but has not adopted, an AI-disclosure requirement at consent and in-call (FCC 24-84) (Source: [FCC 24-84, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-84A1.txt))
- **Jan 2025**: The Eleventh Circuit vacates the FCC's one-to-one consent rule; the written-consent definition itself survives (Source: [Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC (11th Cir.)](https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202410277.pdf))

One boundary worth stating plainly, because it is the reason this page exists at all: your form is your artifact. No service provider can make your consent record good on your behalf, and any vendor telling you their product makes you compliant is describing something a product cannot do. Ours is built to refuse work it should not do, a number with no consent record behind it is not dialable, and that is a control, not a compliance opinion. What the calls themselves say is on [what it says](https://callhush.com/what-it-says).

The companion question, whether the calls and texts are lawful at all, and who is exposed when they are not, is answered from the same primary sources on [is it legal to call and text registrants](https://callhush.com/compliance/is-it-legal-to-call-and-text-registrants). How many touches a registrant receives, and on what triggers, is on [the sequence](https://callhush.com/the-sequence). And once more, plainly: this page describes what the sources say, it is not legal advice, and it makes no assessment of your form.

## Frequently asked questions

### Does a webinar registration count as prior express written consent?

Only if the registration form was built to be one. 47 CFR 64.1200(f)(9) defines prior express written consent as an agreement in writing bearing the signature of the person called, authorising the seller to deliver advertisements or telemarketing messages using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, and identifying the telephone number to which they may be delivered, with a clear and conspicuous disclosure that consent is not a condition of purchase. A phone field on a registration page with nothing attached to it satisfies none of that. The same page can satisfy all of it.

### Is a checkbox really a signature?

The regulation contemplates it. Subparagraph (f)(9)(ii) states that the term signature includes an electronic or digital form of signature to the extent it is recognised as a valid signature under applicable federal law or state contract law, and the E-SIGN Act provides that a signature, contract or other record may not be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form. What makes it fail is not the medium but the state: a box that arrives pre-ticked is not an affirmative act by the person called.

### Whose name goes on the form: mine, or my service provider's?

The seller's. Consent runs to the entity named on the form, which means a registrant who consented to one company has not consented to a different one, and consent cannot be pooled or reused across clients. The FTC's rule makes the point directly: an express written agreement for prerecorded telemarketing has to evidence willingness to receive calls from a specific named seller. Naming one specific company is trivially defensible. Naming a company and its unspecified partners is an exhibit.

### Do I have to say that an AI voice may be used?

No adopted federal rule requires it as of the date on this page. FCC 24-84, a notice of proposed rulemaking, would add a consent-time disclosure at 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(13) and an in-call disclosure at 64.1200(b)(1), and both remain proposals. State law is a different matter: California Public Utilities Code section 2874 requires the announcement made before an automatic dialing-announcing device operates to inform the person called if the prerecorded message uses an artificial voice. Including AI language costs nothing today and avoids retrofitting a live script fleet later.

### What has to be retained, and for how long?

Enough to reconstruct the page the person actually saw: the consent text as displayed and its version, the timestamp, the IP, the page URL, the affirmative state of the checkbox, the number as entered and the seller named. Under the FCC's revocation framework the burden of proving consent sits on the caller, so a consent you cannot produce functions as a consent you never had. Separately, 47 CFR 64.1200(d)(6) provides that a do-not-call request must be honoured for five years from the time it is made.

### If someone opts out, what does that have to reach?

Everything, not just the channel it arrived on. Revocation may be made in any reasonable manner and the request must be honoured within a reasonable time not to exceed ten business days from receipt, and the caller may not designate a single exclusive means of revoking. In practice that means an opt-out spoken on a call has to stop the texts, an opt-out typed as ordinary prose has to be recognised as one, and the suppression has to be applied at the moment of dialling rather than at the moment a list is built.

### Will you put the form requirements in writing before we start?

Yes, and we will also tell you plainly what that document is not. It is a description of what named regulations require, so that you and your attorney can check your page against it. It is not legal advice, it is not a warranty that your form is sufficient, and no service provider can make your consent record good on your behalf: the form is your artifact, on your domain, in your name.

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