New SMS Sender ID Register will make telcos responsible for addressing scams

“The SMS Sender ID Register is an important tool to protect hard-working Australians from increasingly sophisticated and organised scammers,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

“We’ve all received scam messages on our phones purporting to be from reputable sources – and it’s costing Australians millions of dollars every year. This mandatory register will enable these messages to be blocked or flagged as a scam – better protecting consumers from being cheated.

“In this way, the register will also help restore trust in communications received from legitimate organisations and make Australia an even harder place for scammers to operate.”

The move comes as Australia sees an uptick in text message scams, with latest Australian Taxation Office figures showing 25,609 ATO impersonation scams were reported last financial year, up 25 per cent in 12 months.

Research conducted by the Commonwealth Bank earlier this year found nine out of 10 people were confident they could spot a fake SMS or email, but its testing found only 69 per cent of adults could identify all the tax scams they were shown.

The establishment of the register follows recent passage of new legislation to crack down on SMS scams and forms part of Labor’s suite of measures to address scamming. The government anticipates the register will be open for registration of Sender IDs from late next year.

The government will provide $10m over four years to ACMA to launch and maintain the register, building on the $168m currently devoted to tackling scam activity across the economy.

Assistant Treasurer and Fin­ancial Services Minister Stephen Jones said the government’s “coordinated approach to keeping Australians safe from scammers is among the most comprehensive in the world and the register will help to bolster our defences against criminal scammers”.

“Scam text messages bombard Australians 24/7. The register will help to shut this down by disrupting the scammers’ business model,” he said.

“The government’s crackdown on scams is already showing signs of success, but it is not job done. We continue to work to ensure Australians have the best protections against these predatory and criminal scams.”

This article first appeared in The Australian