Blacklist vs Suppression List

Two Different Tools for Two Different Jobs

TrackDrive provides two distinct mechanisms for preventing
contact with a phone number. They are commonly confused,
but they operate at different scopes and serve different
purposes.

The Blacklist Is Company-Wide

The blacklist is a company-wide list of phone numbers that
are prohibited from any form of contact across the entire
account. A number on the blacklist will not be dialed by
any schedule, will not be matched to any offer, and will
be blocked from all inbound and outbound interactions.
The blacklist is the heaviest possible restriction.

Internally the blacklist is the set of Contact records
where blocked = true. The blacklist UI lives at
/contacts/ and is gated by the suppression_list
superuser permission.

Use the blacklist when a number should never be contacted
by the company under any circumstances: fraud, legal
complaints, revoked consent, or known bad actors.

Suppression Lists Are Per-Offer, Per-Schedule, or Per-Buyer

Buyer Suppression Lists allow narrower, distinctive
restrictions. A suppression list is a named bucket of
phone numbers that can be attached to specific offers,
specific schedules, or specific buyers. A number on a
suppression list is only prevented from contact within
the scope of those attachments. The same number remains
contactable for everything else.

Suppression lists are managed on the Suppression Lists
page, available to administrators with system setup
access.

Use a suppression list when a number should be excluded
from a specific buyer relationship, a specific campaign,
or a specific schedule while remaining available for
other campaigns.

Quick Decision Guide

• Never contact this number again for anyone in our company: use the blacklist.
• Do not send this number to Buyer A, but Buyer B is fine: use a suppression list attached to Buyer A.
• This offer has a do-not-call list provided by the advertiser: use a suppression list attached to that offer.
• This schedule should skip a specific cohort of numbers: use a suppression list attached to that schedule.