Hunter residents are being urged to familiarise themselves with changes to how text messages appear on mobile phones, with new national rules taking effect from Wednesday 1 July designed to make scam messages easier to spot.
Under the new SMS Sender ID Register, businesses and organisations that send branded text messages (such as banks, retailers and government agencies) must register their sender name. From 1 July, any message from an unregistered sender will display as ‘Unverified’ rather than showing the organisation’s name, and will appear in a shared ‘Unverified’ message thread alongside other unregistered messages.
NGM Group, the customer-owned organisation behind local banks Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank, is encouraging Hunter customers to use the change as a prompt to stay vigilant. Chief Customer and Digital Innovation Officer James Cudmore said the new system gave people another layer of protection.
“From 1 July, customers should expect legitimate branded text messages to come from a registered sender name, while messages marked ‘Unverified’ should be treated with caution,” Mr Cudmore said.
“This is another tool in the fight against scammers, giving people another way to spot a red flag and pause before they click, reply or share information.”
The SMS Sender ID Register forms part of the broader Scams Prevention Framework, which also includes greater information sharing between banks, stronger warning and detection systems and the rollout of Confirmation of Payee technology.
NGM Group is encouraging Hunter residents to take simple steps to protect themselves: pause before acting on urgent or unexpected messages; look for verified sender names; never share one-time passcodes; contact your bank through official channels rather than replying to a suspicious message; and report anything that doesn’t feel right to your bank directly.
