This Acceptable Use Policy sets the rules for using Closefly's services. It is part of every client agreement we sign and applies to every message, call, and campaign that leaves our systems on a client's behalf. If you break it, we can suspend or end the service.
The reason it exists is simple. Text messages sent to people who did not agree to receive them create legal exposure for the sender and for us, and they get our phone numbers blocked by carriers, which harms every other client we serve.
1. Consent comes first
Before the first message goes to a person, the client must have that person's agreement to be contacted, and the agreement must cover the kind of message being sent.
- Keep the record. The client must be able to show when, where, and how each person agreed: the signed intake form, the timestamped web form, the checked box and the words next to it, or the inbound message. The client keeps this record for at least four years after the person opts out, and gives it to us within five business days if we ask.
- Consent belongs to the client and to one purpose. It cannot be bought, sold, rented, shared between locations or brands, or reused for a purpose the person did not agree to. Purchased lists, scraped numbers, skip-traced numbers, and lists acquired with a business are not consent.
- Marketing needs written consent. Any message that promotes a treatment, a price, a package, an event, or an offer is marketing. In Florida and several other states this requires the person's prior express written consent, obtained through a clear disclosure next to the place they gave the number. An old patient record with a phone number in it is not written consent to marketing.
- Two narrower routes exist. First, if a person messages the client first, the client may reply within that conversation, and only about that subject. Second, where a person gave the client their number and took an action such as booking, buying, or asking for an appointment, the client may send information about that action — a confirmation, a reminder, a receipt, an aftercare note — provided the message does not promote anything and the person has not opted out.
- Stale consent expires. If a long time has passed since consent was given, the client must reconfirm it in the first message rather than assume it.
2. Say who you are
Every first message in a conversation must clearly identify the business sending it. Follow-up messages inside a live conversation do not need to repeat it.
3. Honour opt-outs immediately
- The first message to a person must include opt-out instructions, such as "Reply STOP to opt out."
- STOP, STOPALL, END, QUIT, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, and any clear request to stop must all work, in English and in Spanish, however the person phrases it.
- After an opt-out, one confirmation message is allowed and nothing more. The person must give consent again before any further message.
- Opt-outs apply across every system, list, and phone number the client uses with us, not only the campaign the person replied to.
4. Timing and volume
No messages before 8:00 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m. in the recipient's local time. No more than three marketing messages to the same number in one day about the same subject. Respect any frequency preference a person states.
5. Using the AI honestly
- The AI must never claim to be a specific named human, a nurse, a doctor, or any licensed professional.
- If a person asks whether they are talking to a person or a machine, the answer must be truthful, and a human handoff must be available.
- The AI must not give medical advice, diagnose, recommend a treatment for a specific condition, quote a price as binding, or promise a clinical outcome.
- The client is responsible for reviewing the AI's instructions, its approved answers, and its price and treatment information, and for keeping them accurate. Closefly does not verify clinical claims.
- The client is responsible for any disclosure of AI use that the law requires of it.
6. Content we will not send
The services may not be used to send, promote, or link to:
- Unsolicited advertising or bulk messages to people who did not consent.
- Prescription products that cannot lawfully be advertised or sold direct to consumers, including compounded medications marketed outside the rules that govern them.
- Claims that a treatment cures, treats, or prevents a disease, unless the client can evidence the claim and it is lawful for the client to make it.
- Before-and-after imagery or patient information used without that patient's written authorisation.
- Financing, lending, debt, credit repair, cryptocurrency, or investment offers.
- Cannabis, CBD, tobacco, vaping, alcohol, firearms, gambling, or sexual content.
- Anything unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, harassing, defamatory, obscene, or infringing.
- Malware, phishing, or anything designed to breach a system.
7. No evading filters
No deliberately misspelled words or non-standard opt-out phrases designed to slip past carrier filters. No spreading identical messages across many numbers to avoid detection. No public link shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl; use a dedicated branded domain. No false sender identity or altered message headers.
8. Patient information
Where the client is a HIPAA covered entity, protected health information may be used only as the signed Business Associate Agreement allows, and only the minimum necessary. Treatment details, diagnoses, and medication names must not appear in an unencrypted text message unless the patient has been warned of the risk and has agreed in writing to be contacted that way.
9. Compliance is the client's responsibility
Closefly's services are tools. Using them does not make a client compliant with any law. The client is responsible for its own compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act and equivalent state laws, the CAN-SPAM Act, HIPAA, state advertising and telehealth rules, and the rules of the boards that license it. Closefly does not give legal advice, and nothing we say is legal advice.
10. Monitoring and enforcement
We may review messages sent through our systems to check compliance with this policy, to protect our phone numbers and our other clients, and to investigate complaints. Where we believe this policy has been broken, or where a carrier, a regulator, or a credible complaint requires it, we may pause a campaign, block a list, suspend the service, or end the agreement, in that order where circumstances allow. We will tell the client what we did and why. Where a client's conduct exposes us to a claim, our client agreement requires the client to cover it.
11. Reporting a problem
If you receive a message you did not agree to, or you believe this policy has been broken, tell us at legal@closefly.ai. We will investigate and, where the complaint is about a client's list, require the client to stop and produce its consent records.