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Hong Kong promotional messaging compliance checklist — what the UEMO requires of senders

Send a promotional text to a Hong Kong number and, legally, you have sent a commercial electronic message (CEM) governed by the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (Cap. 593, “the UEMO”).

The duty sits with the sender. A provider can filter, register and configure on your behalf, but where the list came from and what the message says is yours.

Here are the ordinance’s main requirements for senders, plus a checklist you can work through.

What the ordinance covers

The UEMO governs commercial electronic messages with a Hong Kong link, spanning email, fax, short messages and pre-recorded telephone messages. Note that person-to-person telemarketing calls fall outside the UEMO — those sit under a different regime.

MMS sent to a mobile number falls into the short message category.

The sender’s five main duties

1. Provide clear and accurate sender information

The message must identify the sender and give contact information, neither concealed nor falsified. In addition, calling line identification information must not be hidden.

In practice that means using a recognisable sender name rather than an unattributable number. A registered # Sender ID is the clearest option — the process is in Registering a # Sender ID in Hong Kong.

2. Provide an unsubscribe facility and a statement

Every commercial electronic message must carry an unsubscribe facility and a statement explaining how to use it.

For short messages specifically, you must provide at least one Hong Kong telephone number on which an unsubscribe request can be made orally or by key input.

This is a common miss. “Reply STOP to unsubscribe” on its own does not satisfy the requirement — the ordinance expects a telephone-number facility for short messages.

3. Honour unsubscribe requests within 10 working days

Once a request has been sent, you must stop sending further commercial electronic messages to that electronic address within 10 working days from the day the request was sent.

So unsubscribe handling cannot be a “we’ll clean it before the next campaign” task. In practice, wire it into list management so the next send excludes them automatically.

4. Do not send to numbers on a Do-not-call Register

The Communications Authority maintains three registers, covering:

  • Facsimile messages
  • Short messages
  • Pre-recorded telephone messages

From the 10th working day after a number is registered, you may not send commercial electronic messages to it unless the registered user has given consent.

Our dashboard sender and API filter these numbers by default — the corresponding API field is send_also_ofca_registrants, which defaults to false. Promotional traffic should keep that default. Where a message is filtered by the register, the 1st callback returns an OFCA status and the message is not billed.

5. No misleading subject headings

Email messages must not use misleading subject headings. The same principle extends into the message body: discount depth, expiry dates and eligibility conditions should match reality.

The checklist

Run this before each promotional send:

List

  • You can explain where every number came from (member signup, in-store capture, event registration…)
  • All previously unsubscribed numbers excluded
  • Do-not-call Register filtering left on (send_also_ofca_registrants stays false)
  • Numbers normalised (country_code and mobile separated, no +, no spaces)

Content

  • The message identifies the sender
  • There is an unsubscribe statement, with a Hong Kong telephone number as the facility
  • Discounts, deadlines and conditions match reality
  • No misleading heading or opening line

Process

  • There is a defined path for receiving and processing unsubscribe requests
  • Unsubscribes take effect within 10 working days
  • Records exist to evidence the above — if anything is ever questioned, the records are your answer

Technical

  • Using a registered sender name (otherwise the API returns IS)
  • Callback URL configured, so OFCA and other filter statuses are received

Questions that come up

They are already my members — do I still need an unsubscribe facility? Yes. The UEMO’s requirements for commercial electronic messages are not waived by an existing relationship. That relationship matters in other respects, but not for the unsubscribe facility itself.

Does this cover MMS? Yes. MMS to a mobile number is a short-message class commercial electronic message. It is also why the unsubscribe information has to be budgeted for inside the 230 KB text allowance — see the compliance section on the MMS page.

Do transactional notices need an unsubscribe facility? A purely transactional notice — order status, verification code, billing reminder — differs in nature from a promotional message. But the line blurs: “your order has shipped, and here is 10% off” is both. When in doubt, the conservative treatment is much cheaper than the alternative.

What if I use someone else’s list? Beyond the UEMO, that raises personal data privacy questions. The practical advice is short: send to the list you collected.

The above summarises the key duties to help you plan a campaign. For actual compliance requirements, rely on the ordinance itself and current guidance from the Office of the Communications Authority, and take legal advice where needed.

Official sources:

The hard part of compliance is never the rules. It is remembering to check every single time. Make it part of the process and it stops being a risk. If you want help wiring that into your sending operation, get in touch.