Smishing and Sender ID Spoofing: A Detection and Prevention Guide

Smishing has emerged as a critical threat, exploiting the trusted nature of SMS to deceive recipients and harvest sensitive information. 39% of mobile attacks from Q4 2022 to Q3 2023 were text fraud ¹, with 75% of organizations experiencing at least one successful attack in 2023 (State of the Phish 2024) ². For businesses, smishing damages customer trust and weakens the reliability of SMS for legitimate communication. For MNOs, MVNOs, and IPX providers, smishing undermines the credibility of SMS, resulting in decreased Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging revenues as businesses turn to alternative platforms. Addressing smishing is vital to improving user experience, as well as to securing both user data and the broader communication ecosystem. This guide outlines the growing impact of smishing, highlights its connection to sender spoofing, and provides strategies to protect SMS communications against evolving fraud tactics.

What is Smishing?

Smishing, or SMS phishing, is a cyberattack where fraudsters use deceptive messages to trick individuals into sharing sensitive information like credentials, financial details, or verification codes. These SMS scams often impersonate trusted entities—such as banks, delivery services, or government agencies—and employ urgency or enticing offers to lure victims into acting quickly. Messages frequently contain dangerous URLs that direct recipients to phishing websites designed to steal information or install malware, amplifying the threat. The term "smishing" combines "SMS" and "phishing," underscoring its reliance on text-based communication to exploit victims.

Stop Smishing Today: Learn how AB Handshake’s advanced AI and end-to-end validation solutions can protect your SMS channels and restore messaging integrity.

Smishing vs. Phishing

Smishing is a subset of phishing, but the two differ primarily in their method of delivery and approach:

• Communication Channel: Phishing can be done over many channels, such as emails, websites, or social media, whereas smishing specifically involves text messages (SMS).
• Typical Targets: Phishing typically casts a wider net, targeting individuals, businesses, and organizations through email, social media, or fake websites. In contrast, smishing focuses more narrowly on individual mobile users, exploiting the personal and immediate nature of text messages to prompt quicker responses.
• Key Indicators: Phishing messages may feature suspicious email domains or fake logos, while smishing uses fake sender IDs, an urgent tone, and suspicious links to deceive victims.
• Ease of Execution: Phishing requires convincing email designs, and most are successfully sent to junk folders, whereas fake text messages are easier to execute with sender spoofing. Bulk SMS scam tools also enable mass SMS phishing.
• Motive: Both methods aim to commit financial fraud or steal credentials, but smishing often focuses on quick financial gain and personal data harvesting.

Smishing is highly effective due to its immediacy and the perceived authenticity of SMS. By incorporating trusted sender IDs, fraudsters can launch quick, damaging attacks, with users responding faster to SMS than emails.

What is Sender ID Spoofing?

Sender ID Spoofing involves altering sender details in SMS messages to disguise their true origin. It’s critical to text message phishing, making fraudulent messages appear credible by mimicking well-known entities and making international messages appear as local traffic.

Explore advanced solutions for preventing sender spoofing with AB Handshake's CLI spoofing prevention solution.

How Sender ID Spoofing Works

Altering sender details is achieved by exploiting weaknesses in telecom protocols or routing messages through international or roaming networks to bypass domestic filters. There are two main types of spoofed SMS:

• Alphanumeric Spoofing: Mimics official sender names (e.g., "First Bank") to appear authentic. While commonly used by legitimate enterprises for A2P messaging and customer communication, fraudsters exploit this to impersonate reputable brands and deceive users.
• Long Code Spoofing: Mimics numeric sender IDs resembling local or international phone numbers. Often used in neighbor spoofing (see below), long codes are associated with personal communication but are more vulnerable to spoofing due to simpler authentication protocols.

Why Smishing Needs Sender ID Spoofing

Fraudsters employ various tactics to bypass suspicion and engage victims effectively:

• Neighbor Spoofing: Alters the sender ID to resemble the recipient’s own number or area code, such as using +1 234-567-0000 for a recipient with +1 234-567-8900. This tactic increases the likelihood of faking legitimate engagement.
• International vs. National Traffic: Fraudsters often route messages internationally to bypass stricter domestic regulations. Even within national traffic, gaps in outdated protocols can allow spoofed text messages to succeed.
• Roaming Traffic: Messages routed through multiple networks during roaming create detection challenges, as fragmented oversight makes it harder to verify the sender's identity.
• Impersonation: Changing the sender ID to that of a trusted bank, business, or other institution, fostering trust in the message, its content, and any fraudulent URLs included.

In-depth details on CLI spoofing and its impact on SMS communication can be found in this comprehensive guide to CLI spoofing.

These tactics highlight the importance of proactive measures to combat spoofing, such as advanced AI-based detection and inter-operator collaboration.

The Cost of Smishing: Smishing Statistics 2022 -2024

Victims of smishing face direct financial losses, averaging $800 globally per attack ³, along with breaches of privacy and emotional distress. Vulnerable demographics are particularly targeted, with only 23% of users over 55 and 34% of millennials able to identify smishing attempts ⁴. Smishing “kits” are available for as little as $200 per month, enabling fraudsters to scale operations globally ⁵.

Enterprises in sectors like banking, e-commerce, and logistics are frequent targets. The Business Standard reports a 393% surge in finance-related text scam attacks in 2023 ⁶, with banks particularly at risk from impersonation and employee-targeted fraud, resulting in financial losses, reputational damage, and regulatory scrutiny.

Telecom operators also face significant challenges. 60% of international A2P SMS markets showed a decline by early 2024 ⁷. Additionally, 19.8–35.7 billion fraudulent messages in 2023 ⁸ represented 4.8% of all A2P SMS ⁹, undermining confidence and straining the messaging ecosystem.

Smishing’s impact varies across regions:

• North America: With 400 million smishing messages sent daily in the U.S. ¹⁰, public awareness remains low—only 35% of Americans understand smishing ¹¹, increasing vulnerability.
• Europe: Mobile malware SMS attempts tied to smishing have risen by 500% since 2022 ¹², commonly targeting banking applications and tracking user actions.
• Latin America: Brazil lost 3.2% of its GDP to phone fraud between 2022 and 2023, with 134 million smishing-related attacks recorded ¹³.
• Asia-Pacific: In the last quarter of 2023, 43% of Filipino consumers faced mobile scams ¹⁴, while India recorded 350,000 daily smishing attempts tied to banking message fraud ¹⁵.
• Africa: Android users, who constitute 75% of the smartphone market, are particularly vulnerable, with banking fraud increasing by 24% since 2022 ¹⁶.

Combat Fraud with Confidence: Discover how AB SMS Security helps MNOs, MVNOs, and enterprises block fraudulent traffic and safeguard their networks.

Examples of Smishing

Smishing attacks target both users and businesses across various sectors. These real-life examples highlight the growing sophistication and impact of smishing threats.

Banking and Financial Accounts

Smishing often impersonates financial institutions, leveraging urgency to deceive recipients. In 2023, Bank of America customers received fraudulent messages about "suspicious activity," leading to significant losses, including $40,000 from one victim. Similarly, an HSBC smishing attack in Australia tricked 24 victims into calling a fake support line, resulting in $1,000,000 in losses.

Shipping, Logistics, and E-commerce

Smishing targets delivery services by sending fake messages about shipment issues to collect payments or sensitive data. In a notable case, UPS disclosed a data breach in 2023, which enabled attackers to impersonate the company in SMS phishing attacks, demanding payments to release packages using real customer data for added credibility.

Government Agencies

Impersonating government bodies is another tactic. In 2024, fraudsters posing as the IRS targeted car dealers, urging them to click links or provide personal information. This coincided with a larger attack on CDK Global, disrupting over 15,000 dealerships and resulting in a $25 million ransomware payment.

Malware Distribution

Smishing is a common delivery method for malware. In 2024, Brazilian users were targeted with tax-themed smishing campaigns linked to the PINEAPPLE threat actor. These messages deployed the Astaroth malware, which is capable of stealing sensitive credentials, including banking and cryptocurrency information.

Fake Contests and Prizes

Fraudsters lure victims with promises of prizes or rewards, capitalizing on excitement to bypass skepticism. After a $1.3 billion Powerball win in 2024, scammers claimed the winner was donating money and tricked victims into providing financial information to "claim" their prize.

Spear Phishing, Whaling, and Catfishing

Spear phishing and whaling impersonate trusted contacts to defraud high-value individuals, such as executives, for financial gain. Similarly, catfishing uses emotional manipulation for personal or financial exploitation. Although these attacks require more time and effort, their precision often results in significant payouts, sometimes reaching millions of dollars.

SMS Security Regulation

The rise of SMS fraud has driven global regulatory efforts to protect consumers and hold telecom operators accountable. These regulations aim to curb spoofing and smishing while preserving legitimate business uses of spoofing.

Is Number Spoofing Legal?

Spoofing (altering sender IDs in SMS messages) is not inherently illegal and has legitimate uses, such as branded notifications. However, when used to impersonate recognizable entities, spoofing becomes illegal and subject to penalties in many countries. Regulations target malicious spoofing while supporting ethical practices.

Key Regulatory Examples

• Singapore’s Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF): Launched in 2023, this framework assigns financial liability for smishing to telecom operators and requires collaboration with financial institutions and the deployment of advanced fraud detection systems.
• European Union Initiatives: The EU is considering regulations similar to Singapore’s SRF. Proposed regulations aim to make operators partially liable for SMS fraud, emphasizing collaboration between telecom and financial sectors to combat impersonation scams.
• GLF and i3Forum Framework: Introduced in 2024, this industry initiative encourages fraud monitoring, blocking suspicious numbers, and sharing information to secure SMS as a reliable channel.

Growing Pressure on Telcos

Since 2022, regulatory fines for fraud-related failures have surged by 144%, alongside a 50% increase in reports of reputational damage linked to smishing ¹⁷. Frameworks like Singapore’s SRF highlight the urgency for proactive measures.

Operators that fail to act increasingly risk penalties, eroded trust, and reduced customer loyalty due to fraud messages. Conversely, those investing in strong anti-fraud measures can enhance their reputation and boost customer confidence. Proactive compliance is now a competitive necessity.

Current Spoofing and Smishing Solutions and Their Limitations

A variety of tools and strategies are available to address spoofing and smishing, each targeting specific aspects of the problem, but they also face significant challenges:

1. Awareness Campaigns: Teach users to recognize suspicious messages and avoid engaging with malicious links, providing a frontline defense against smishing. However, their effectiveness is limited by variations in user vigilance, making it challenging to scale and leaving systemic issues unresolved.
2. Detection Apps: Employ algorithms to identify suspicious patterns in SMS messages and alert individuals in real time, enhancing user protection. Despite their utility, they often struggle to detect smaller, targeted attacks like spear smishing, which can bypass filters by using legitimate sender IDs.
3. Tools Like MEF’s SMS SenderID Protection Registry: Automate the verification of legitimate sender IDs and allow organizations to register their sender IDs to reduce impersonation. The effectiveness of such verified sender registries depends on coordination between telecom operators, regulators, and enterprises. A lack of unified efforts creates gaps that fraudsters exploit.
4. Messaging Spam Filters and SMS Firewalls: Analyze traffic patterns and content to block fraudulent messages before they reach users, effectively handling high-volume attacks like spam campaigns. However, many are reactive, relying on historical patterns and rules, which makes them less effective against new and rapidly evolving fraud tactics. By their nature, firewalls and spam filters are prone to overblocking, which leads to revenue loss and unnecessary service disruption.
5. URL Blocklists: Prevent access to known phishing sites by identifying and blocking malicious URLs embedded in messages. The dynamic nature of fraud tactics, with fraudsters using short-lived URLs that are rotated frequently, often renders these reactive defenses ineffective.
6. Number Intelligence Services: Detect illegitimate numbers and ranges used in spoofing attacks. As 75% of spoofed traffic impersonates legitimate numbers, these services are only able to detect a fraction of all spoofed traffic. 

To address these challenges, there is a need to shift from purely reactive strategies to proactive, unified solutions that anticipate new tactics through real-time detection, machine learning, and proactive intelligence. This approach will help close the gaps left by current methodologies and enhance the overall effectiveness of combating smishing and spoofing.

How to Stop Smishing and Spoofing

Effectively combating smishing and spoofing requires a comprehensive approach, combining proven best practices with advanced technological solutions. Key strategies include:

AI Trained on Large Datasets

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a pivotal role in combating smishing. AI systems trained on extensive telco datasets can detect irregular traffic patterns, adapt to emerging tactics, and predict potential threats in real time. Solutions like AB SMS Security use behavioral analysis to analyze traffic patterns, sender correlations, and message content, delivering highly accurate fraud detection. These capabilities help block malicious SMS while maximizing the delivery of legitimate communications, preserving trust in the SMS channel.

End-to-End Validation

Programs like GSMA Call Check are an effective way to ensure the validity of calls. However, this service applies only to voice traffic. End-to-end validation of SMS traffic is the most effective way to detect sender spoofing and prevent impersonation and other SMS fraud. Solutions like AB Handshake’s validation technology use out-of-band queries to verify the sender details of SMS messages, ensuring the sender ID is not spoofed and the message is legitimate.

Discover how AB SMS Security can help prevent spoofing, smishing, and other fraud.

Verify URLs

An important step in preventing smishing involves verifying URLs embedded in SMS messages. By analyzing parameters like the age of the website, hosting history, and associated metadata, operators can identify potentially malicious links. This proactive method goes beyond static blocklists, providing a defense against dynamic threats like newly created phishing sites. Ensuring real-time URL verification is an essential part of any anti-smishing strategy. 

Learn how AB SMS Security analyzes traffic patterns, sender correlations, content, and links to identify and neutralize potential fraud. 

Apply Volumetric/Spam Filters and GSMA Rulesets

Volumetric filters and GSMA rulesets provide a reliable foundation for detecting many smishing attempts. These filters identify traffic anomalies, such as sudden spikes in bulk SMS, while GSMA-recommended practices provide a baseline defense against fraud. Integrating these measures strengthens defenses and aligns operators with industry standards for effective fraud prevention.

National Approach

A unified national strategy is the most effective approach to addressing spoofing and smishing on a large scale. Collaboration among regulators, telecom operators, and enterprises is key to the development of comprehensive solutions tailored to regional challenges. Combining regulatory measures with advanced fraud prevention technologies enables more effective detection and mitigation of spoofing and smishing threats.

Learn more about the national approach to smishing prevention with AB Handshake’s innovative National Anti-Fraud platform.

Why Should CSPs Stop Smishing?

For Communications Service Providers (CSPs), combating smishing is crucial to protect users, prevent financial losses, and preserve the value of SMS as a communication channel. Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging, a significant revenue driver, is particularly at risk as smishing and impersonation drive enterprises and consumers toward alternative platforms.

With unique control over network infrastructure, CSPs can proactively detect and block fraudulent messages in real time. These measures protect messaging integrity, strengthen business relationships, and ensure SMS remains a competitive and reliable tool for communication.

Now is the Time to Take Action 

Combatting smishing requires real-time solutions tailored to the needs of your network and business. AB Handshake’s SMS anti-fraud solutions combine advanced AI and end-to-end validation to safeguard SMS channels from smishing and sender spoofing. 

Contact AB Handshake today to discuss how we can help secure your SMS traffic and restore confidence in SMS communications.