Customer verification

2.1Who can get a line

Ostra provides lines to individuals and to businesses, and each one passes Ostra’s sign-up check before any line is assigned.

• An individual is one person, 18 or older. Their account is for them alone: it has no other members, and a person can hold only one.
• A business is a company or other organization registered with a government. Its account can add the people on its team.

Every line, an individual’s or a business’s, is used only as the acceptable use policy allows.

Ostra serves customers in the United States only: a US address, a US mobile number, and a sign-up from the United States or its territories.

2.2What Ostra checks

• Your name. Your full legal name and, for a business, the business’s legal name.
• Your address. A US address: your home for an individual, the business’s address for a business.
• Your mobile number. A US mobile number, proved by a 6-digit code texted to it and typed back within 10 minutes. Ostra refuses an internet-phone (VoIP) number, a landline, and any number that is or was one of Ostra’s own lines.
• The sanctions lists. Every name is screened against the US government’s sanctions lists, which Ostra downloads every day.
• Where you sign up from. The address your sign-up comes from must be in the United States or its territories. A sign-up from anywhere else is refused.
• Two statements. That you are 18 or older, and that you accept the acceptable use policy in force. Each is kept with the time, the address it came from and your browser.

Ostra does not ask for a date of birth, a government ID or its number, a tax ID, or a copy or photo of any document. It uses no outside identity-verification company: the check runs on Ostra’s own servers, a calls and messaging provider texts the code and says whether the number is a mobile line, and a security provider’s bot check on the sign-up pages confirms that a person, not a script, is signing up. Ostra may ask for more when a person reviews a sign-up.

2.3Who decides

Ostra’s check decides when you submit. An account it clears is approved at once, and the approval is recorded. A sign-up it cannot clear goes to a person at Ostra, who decides: a name close to one on the sanctions lists, an address whose place cannot be told, or a check that could not run. Ostra does not say why a sign-up is held. A person also decides every order that would take an account above 5 lines (2.5). A line is never assigned to a customer before the account is approved.

Ostra declines a request when a name matches one on the sanctions lists, when it cannot verify the person or the business, when the use is not allowed under the acceptable use policy, or when information given to it is false. Ostra can also decline a request for other reasons.

2.4One basis for each line

Before a line is assigned, you state its basis. A line has exactly one basis at a time, and a new basis needs a new attestation.

1. AYour own service. An account, service, domain or app you or your business owns or operates. Ostra may ask you to show it.
2. BWritten permission to test. A service whose operator has given you written permission to test it. You give Ostra a copy.
3. CThe line's own number. Codes that confirm the number Ostra issued to you.

Every line refuses a default list of blocked sites: the websites of major US banks and brokerages, person-to-person payment apps, federal and major state benefit and tax portals, and major ticketing platforms (3.5). One of them opens on a line only when its service is named in that line’s attestation and a person at Ostra approves the exception for that line. Ticketing sites never open.

2.5How many lines

There is no fixed number of lines per customer, individual or business, and no wholesale agreement is needed. An order that would take you above 5, counting the lines you hold and have on order, is checked by a person at Ostra before any line is assigned or charged. Lines go to orders first come, first served, as they are ready (terms 4.5).

2.6No trial lines

Ostra has no free or trial lines. Every line, including a customer's first, is assigned only after verification.

2.7Keeping it current

Tell Ostra when your name, address or mobile number changes; for a business, when its name, ownership or address changes or the person running the account changes; and when a line's use changes.

Ostra may ask you to verify again at any time, and suspends lines whose verification it can no longer confirm. Ostra screens every customer’s names again when the sanctions lists change.

2.8When a carrier acts

If a carrier suspends a line or a customer, Ostra does not move that use to another line, account or carrier.

A customer whose lines were ended for breaking the acceptable use policy cannot open a new account to carry on the same use.

2.9What Ostra keeps from verification

Your sign-up record, the result of the check, and the record of your acceptance of the acceptable use policy and the terms are kept as Privacy and records describes.