If a text has landed on your phone lately from a sender called "Likely Scam", that tag wasn't put there by your handset or by anything you installed. The mobile network swapped it in on the way through, because whoever sent the message hadn't registered the name they were sending under. Sometimes the sender really is a fraudster. Quite often it's an ordinary Irish business or club that never heard about the rule.
Where the tag came from
A Sender ID is the name at the top of a text instead of a number: the bit that says your bank, your pharmacy or your local garage. It was trivially easy to fake, so ComReg built a register of who is entitled to use which name, and instructed the networks to relabel anything not on it.
The scale behind the decision is not small. ComReg's SMS Sender ID Registry page notes that 2.3 billion texts were sent in Ireland in 2024, around 615 million of them sent by applications rather than people, and cites a Europe Economics estimate putting the quantifiable harm from scam texts at roughly €115 million a year. Counting scam calls too, ComReg's conservative figure is over €300 million a year and about 1,000 people defrauded every day.
The tag is not a verdict
People get caught out both ways. Some trust a message they shouldn't. Others ring a business in a panic because its appointment reminder looked criminal.
What people assume
- The network has examined the message and found fraud
- A tagged message is definitely criminal
- An untagged message has therefore been checked and is safe
- Nothing can be done about it
What it actually means
- The sender's name wasn't on ComReg's register as the message passed
- It may be a real business that simply hasn't registered yet
- Texts from ordinary mobile numbers are never tagged, so no tag proves nothing
- ComReg says some already-registered IDs are being wrongly relabelled, and it is working with providers to fix that
ComReg's own advice for a message wearing the tag is worth repeating, because it applies equally well to any text you weren't expecting:
- Don't tap any link in the message, however plausible the address looks
- Don't ring a number printed in the message
- Look the organisation up separately and use the contact details you find there
If your business sends texts, check this week
Find out what your texts arrive as
Send one to your own phone and look at the sender line. If it's a name rather than a number, it needs to be registered. ComReg's registry has a public search so you can check the status of a Sender ID before doing anything else.
Register it, or have your provider do it
An organisation can register its own Sender ID, or its SMS provider can register on its behalf. If a booking system or marketing tool texts on your behalf, ask them in writing which of you is doing it.
Ask your provider about their own steps
ComReg warns that some providers add processes of their own on top of the ComReg registration, and that aggregators are not permitted to introduce unnecessary hurdles. Worth quoting back at one that's dragging its heels.
Know what doesn't need registering
Your own mobile number doesn't. The registry covers alphanumeric Sender IDs, plus certain numeric short codes: four-digit customer support codes, five-digit messaging and payment codes, and the six-digit European social-value numbers.
What the register can't do
The register makes a familiar sender name harder to counterfeit. It does nothing about a scam sent from an ordinary mobile number, and that gap is now the argument. In a report covered by the Irish Examiner in April 2026, ComReg described Ireland as the only country in the Anglosphere without an SMS scam filter, alongside a shrinking number of EU states. It found that 90% of adults here have had a scam call and 84% a scam text.
ComReg says it cannot mandate content scanning without a legislative basis, and that the Government's position, as stated by Minister Darragh O'Brien, is that legislation for a default filter will not be forthcoming, though an opt-in version remains possible. In the meantime the regulator has floated a filter working on message metadata rather than content, a cap on how many texts can be sent in a period, blocking devices used by scam operations, and a DNS filter that stops known scam domains resolving.
Summary
The practical part is two lines long. Treat "Likely Scam" as a prompt to slow down rather than a confirmed diagnosis, and never trust the absence of it. And if your business or club texts under its own name, check the register this week. The next stage of the rule doesn't put a tag on the message. It stops the message arriving, and nobody rings to tell you.
