Consent Checkbox
Unchecked, SMS-only, beside the disclosure, and stored with its state. A checkbox whose state was never recorded proves nothing.
The checkbox is small; the case law around it is not. Express written consent requires an affirmative act, and courts treat pre-checked boxes as the absence of one — the consumer did nothing. Johnson v. Human Power of N Company made the standard concrete for ecommerce: a checked-by-default SMS box at checkout is not consent.
Validity requirements in practice: unchecked by default; SMS-specific (bundling SMS with email consent or with terms acceptance contaminates both); positioned with the disclosure visible at the point of action; and captured — the stored record must include the checkbox state, not merely the submitted phone number.
The forensic failure mode: forms that technically displayed a checkbox but whose backend never recorded whether it was checked. When the record cannot distinguish a consented submission from a non-consented one, every submission is effectively unconsented.
Frequently asked questions
Related glossary terms
Express written consent is the TCPA standard for marketing SMS — a clear, conspicuous disclosure with a separate, unchecked affirmative opt-in by the consumer, retained as evidence.
SMS disclosure is the set of statements that must appear at the point of opt-in: program/brand name, message frequency, 'Msg & data rates may apply,' STOP/HELP instructions, consent-not-a-condition language, and policy links.
Consent proof is the evidentiary record that a recipient explicitly opted in to SMS — typically a timestamped, IP-logged, hash-locked record of what the user saw and when they consented.