BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): The National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) published new rules for automated sending of SMS to customers. To avoid fraud and increase security, all participating companies will need to register and make the number used for contact publicly available.
The change affects A2P SMS (from an application to a person), that is, text messages used by companies and institutions. Typically, these communications are represented by five-digit short codes to hide the original telephone number.
Participating companies must adopt dedicated and standardized short codes—the same identifier cannot be used by two different companies, for example. These codes will be stored in a public national directory of senders, with free public consultation, in which people will be able to access aggregators and brands responsible for each message
Companies that do not comply with the new rules will not be able to send A2P SMS. Anatel’s ruling, published in the Official Gazette of the Union this Wednesday (04), also provides for security mechanisms throughout the A2P sending chain to verify legitimate campaigns and prevent fraud.
There is a 90-day deadline to adopt all new specifications.
The guidelines can reduce the frequency of SMS scams. Message triggering can be used for phishing attempts (links that lead to malicious websites) and social engineering attempts to convince victims to access misleading content.
With the distribution of codes, each individual gains an alternative to confirm the sender before accessing an alarming message, for example.
While the rules do not come into force, find out how to block scam SMS efficiently on Android.
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