# Control where your account can send

Your first SMS through Bird failed with "destination not enabled", and nothing is broken. Every Bird workspace starts with a destination allowlist that is closed by default, usually with only your own country on it, so a leaked API key or a runaway loop can't spray messages at expensive countries you never meant to serve. In this video we watch a send get blocked, read what the error actually tells us, open the country in the dashboard, and send the exact same message again.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5yEwUnqKgs (2:31)

## What we cover

- Restricting which countries your account can send to
- Why this protects you from unexpected costs
- Changing your destination list

## Transcript

_Auto-generated from the video._

Hey and welcome to another video. Um, today I'm just going to show you how SMS destinations work and why they've been set up. When you navigate in the dashboard to SMS and you head to destinations, you'll see a full list of enabled and disabled destinations. Um, when you create your account for the first time, uh, you'll notice that almost all destinations are set to inactive. This is by design. Um, so instead of an opt-out, we've decided for an opt-in when it comes to SMS destinations um, as a security measurement for yourself. So in the event that you're only active in the Netherlands and Belgium, uh, you only enable those two accounts to prevent your account from running freely towards other destinations. This might be because, uh, of a internet attack or it might be because your API key got lost.

Um, but because the pricing is per message per destination, there are some destinations that are quite expensive and preventing you from hitting an, uh, unnecessary bill, this is why this has been designed. Now, in this case, I've enabled both, uh, Belgium and the Netherlands and I'm going to bring up my terminal.

And I've got a code snippet ready of sending a message to a United States number which I don't have enabled. And here you immediately see in the response that the destination is not enabled for your workspace and enabling it, uh, is required before sending it.

And then let's open up a new terminal session and I also have an example with Dutch number which works exactly as expected. Another important note when it comes to the country registration is the actual list itself. And when we scroll down, we'll actually hit that is also a list, uh, where shared senders are only enabled. So at the moment, it's not possible to do free form SMS to every single destination. This is due to local restrictions and regulations.

For the countries listed below, you can however send a template at this stage, while sender ID registration will be opening up quite soon. Um, there's a different video explaining exactly how to send templates and how you can use them. So, have a look down and watch those as well. And for now, I hope this explained exactly the destinations tab, and if you've got any questions, our support team is always available.

Happy sending.

## More SMS guides

- [Sending your first SMS](/zh-sg/learn/sms/sms-first-send) — 2:17
- [Sending an SMS with a template](/zh-sg/learn/sms/sms-templates) — 3:20
- [Registering your SMS sender ID](/zh-sg/learn/sms/sms-sender-id) — 4:39
- [SMS segments: why one emoji doubles the cost](/zh-sg/learn/sms/sms-segments) — 4:33
- [SMS pumping explained](/zh-sg/learn/sms/sms-pumping) — 2:11

## Resources

- [Documentation](/zh-sg/wendang)
- [Learn more about SMS](/zh-sg/chanpin/sms)