Sender IDs
A sender ID is the name at the top of text messages from businesses or organisations. It tells you who the message is from, like ‘ATO’, ‘AusPost’ or ‘myGov’.
How the register works
Businesses and organisations must register their sender IDs before 1 July 2026.
From then, text messages sent with unregistered sender IDs will have the sender ID replaced with the word ‘Unverified’. These messages will be grouped together in a single message thread on a phone. People will likely treat unverified messages as scams.
Sender ID scams
Australians lost more than $13.8 million to text message scams in the first 9 months of 2025.
Many text scams pretend to be from a trusted business or organisation. They use the same sender IDs as well-known brands and government agencies like NAB, AusPost or myGov.
These scam messages may ask you to click links or provide personal or financial information.
They appear in the same message thread as messages you’ve received from the real organisation. This makes them seem genuine and trusted – see the example below from ‘AusPost’.
Protecting Australians from phone scams
The register is part of the government’s Fighting Scams initiative to address scams and online fraud and protect Australians from financial harm.
It adds to existing ways Australians are being protected from scams.
- Telcos must follow rules to monitor, trace and block scam calls and text messages.
- View our work as the regulator for communications on combating phone scams.