A new front in the war on scammers is to be opened later this year when communications watchdog ComReg rolls out a text-messaging register that will more easily flag and then block rogue SMS messages.
It said on Friday morning it was developing an SMS Sender ID Registry to ensure texting is “a reliable and trustworthy communications channel in Ireland”.
ComReg noted that text message scams are undermining the SMS communications channel with consumers and organisations losing trust in the mode of message delivery.
It said the annual level of harm to Irish consumers and businesses from scam calls and texts was estimated to be over €300 million annually of which approximately €115 million is attributed to scam texts.
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“Many organisations rely on SMS to communicate with their customers and clients,” ComReg said. It pointed to financial transactions, delivery updates and appointments.
Business to client/customer messaging is called Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging.
A2P SMS messages often include an alphanumeric identifier, or SMS Sender ID, that may be the name of the company or brand that sent the message – for example 234BANK.
“SMS Aggregators and Mobile Service Providers handling bulk SMS traffic on behalf of organisations need to preregister their business customers’ SMS Sender IDs with ComReg by February 25th.
From early July SMS messages with unregistered Sender IDs will be labelled “Likely Scam” to alert the recipient that the SMS may not be legitimate.
From October 3rd, SMS messages with unregistered SMS Sender IDs will be blocked.
“Organisations using SMS Sender IDs in their messages to customers should instruct their SMS provider to preregister those SMS Sender IDs with ComReg now,” the watchdog said.
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