New SMS registry aims to tackle €115m scam texts scourge

From July, bulk SMS with unregistered sender IDs will be labelled 'Likely Scam'. And in October, such messages will be blocked

The headache for phone users and those fighting fraud including An Garda Síochána is that fraudulent SMS messages can very closely resemble legit messages. Picture: iStock 

A new SMS registry aims to tackle the scourge of scam texts, estimated to cost Irish consumers and businesses €115m every year.

• From July, bulk SMS with unregistered sender IDs will be labelled “Likely Scam” to alert the recipient that the SMS may not be legitimate.

• From October, SMS messages with unregistered SMS Sender IDs will be blocked.

Scam texts are widespread in Ireland, with estimates for the annual level of harm to consumers and businesses from scam texts at €115m per annum. 

ComReg says the scams lead to consumers and organisations “losing trust in SMS”, while gardaí say ‘smishing’ scams — stealing personal or financial details through texts — were widely in circulation in recent months, particularly in the busy Christmas trading period, with many pretending to be from banks, delivery firms, and government agencies.

The new registry will focus on business to client/customer messaging known as Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging .

These messages usually include a sender ID which acts as an identifier. It is these sender IDs which now need to be registered.

ComReg’s plans for the new register have been welcomed as “extremely positive” by Bank of Ireland head of fraud Nicola Sadlier.

“Building on this development, the bank is hopeful that there will be further progress to implement the programme commitment to examine a broader SMS spam filter to further prevent fraud attempts on Irish consumers,” said Ms Sadlier, who called for the indtroduction of a shared fraud database, as well as tighter regulations on online advertising for financial products and services.

SMS aggregators and mobile service providers handling bulk SMS traffic on behalf of organisations are being encouraged to pre-register SMS sender IDs with ComReg by February 25.

SMS aggregators and mobile service providers need to email [e-mail] to participate.

ComReg says by pre-registering, businesses will not need to wait until the full launch of the registry when individual SMS sender IDs will be registered on a first come, first served basis.