From July 1, when you get a text claiming to be from the Australian Taxation Office, Australia Post or any other organisation, the first thing to check for will be one little word: “unverified”.

If it says that, be extra careful.

Australia’s phone companies blocked more than 153 million scam text messages in 2025 alone, as part of their obligations under the industry’s scam code. Yet many others are still getting through to our phones.

Until now, scammers have been able to mislabel the top of their texts to pretend to be from banks, government or other legitimate businesses.

From July 1 this year, that’s changing.

Major government agencies and big businesses have been preparing for this change for months. But 97% of businesses in Australia – 2.6 million in total – are small businesses, employing fewer than 20 people.

Along with community organisations, they’ve been warned to act fast to register their “sender ID” – or risk having their texts ignored or even reported as scams from July onwards.

What is ‘sender ID’? Why does it matter?

When you get a text message, it shows the sender’s name if that’s saved in your contact list, or else the phone number if it’s not saved.

Businesses can also text their customers with their organisation’s name at the top of a message. That’s known as the “sender ID”.

Scammers have been taking advantage of this process for years to trick their victims. For instance, you might get what appears to be a message from “AusGov” or “AUPost”: fake sender IDs........

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