GUEST OPINION: Digital scams cost Australians millions of dollars each year – and they’re becoming more convincing than ever. 
From SMS messages pretending to be banks to AI-generated voice scams imitating loved ones, it’s getting harder and harder for receivers to sift out safe messages from spam. That’s particularly true for messages that appear mundane – notifying recipients of unpaid toll fees or a parcel stuck in transit – but are in fact the work of spammers. 
As the facilitators for message sending, telcos are under increasing pressure to act and protect consumers from losing out. But with millions of messages being sent every day, where do you begin?
The shift from reactive to proactive 
Previously, scam action was largely reactive. Networks relied on users to report suspicious messages themselves, for telcos to then block the numbers. But as tech has evolved, so has the ability for scammers to send mass messages – and that means that the old approach simply doesn’t work anymore. 
Instead, telcos are having to adopt an infrastructure-wide approach to scam prevention. 
That begins by vetting the senders. Back in 2023, Singapore rolled out mandatory registration of all alphanumeric sender IDs through its own SMS Sender ID registry. Any business that isn’t on the register now has its messages marked as ‘Likely-SCAM’.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has now followed suit, introducing its own Sender ID Register which businesses will need to register with by 1 July 2026. Unregistered senders will then show up on users’ phones in an ‘Unverified’ message thread. 
While this is a step in the right direction, it continues to raise concerns about whether too much responsibility for keeping safe from scams is being placed on the consumer. 
After all, vulnerable consumers might still not understand what ‘unverified’ means, and what they need to do to keep themselves safe – instead assuming that since the message has been delivered to them, it must be legitimate. 

Image created by Gemini Nano Banana 3 based on this article.
Closer content checking
Alongside more careful checking of senders, message contents should also be more heavily scrutinised. Previously, message checks were quite rudimentary, often set to flag for specific keywords associated with fraudulent activity. 
Now, however, carriers have much more sophisticated measures to detect criminals. That includes the ability to assess messages by tone of voice, since malicious messages will often have a sense of urgency to pressure recipients into acting quickly without thinking. 
This is a shift away from simply flagging keywords – a method that could be easily worked around by criminals – and moving towards behaviour-based threat analysis that looks more holistically at messages. This approach is more commonly found in enterprise cybersecurity, but could dramatically cut the number of scam messages received. 
Other red flags – such as unusual spikes in message volume, or suspicious URLs embedded in the text – can also be automatically recognised by security systems, and flagged for immediate review. 
What can Australia learn from other countries fighting the same battle? 
Early reports of Singapore’s sender ID registry were positive, with a 64% reduction in scams from Q4 2021 to Q2 2022, before sender IDs were made mandatory. Scam volumes have continued to drop in the year so far, too. 
But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing left for Singapore to be concerned about. Impersonation scams of government officials have almost tripled in a year, partly blamed on the rise in IP-based messaging platforms like Messenger, which sit outside SMS regulation. 
The lesson is clear – telcos alone can’t solve the problem, and all businesses and channels must follow the same playbook to tackle online fraud. 
The UK is aiming to take such a blanket approach. Comms regulator Ofcom’s latest proposals, prompted by an estimated 100 million suspicious messages reported in the year to April 2025, would apply to every UK mobile operator. 
The rules aim to close gaps in the legislation by introducing messaging volume limits on Pay As You Go SIMs, as well as prompting faster action on suspicious numbers and URLs in messages.
Ofcom also expects network operators to act more quickly on scam reports from customers or third parties, with clear incident-response processes to quickly remove fraudulent traffic and minimise harm. 
For business messaging, the regulator is also hoping to implement mandatory “Know Your Customer” and “Know Your Traffic” checks to prevent criminals from sending mass texts and ensure suspicious account activity is spotted and dealt with quickly. 
These global examples show that tackling SMS scams demands more than just an isolated fix. There’s a need for coordinated reform across the wider mobile and messaging industry. 
Australia’s Sender ID Register is a step in the right direction – but it will only deliver its full potential when paired with tighter traffic monitoring, smarter threat detection and genuine alignment between regulators, telcos and technology providers. 
Scammers are continuously looking for new ways in – it’s imperative that defences evolve just as quickly. 
Jonathan Walsh is the Managing Director at Esendex Australia. 
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