Four UK mobile operators have reportedly teamed up to stop banking frauds conducted through text messages, which costs banking customers hundreds of millions of pounds annually.

Currently, mobile operators EE, O2, Three and Vodafone are trialling a new system called SMS Phishguard, reported The Financial Times. It is designed to filter text message-based phishing scams.

The initiative aims to prevent fraudsters from sending texts appearing in the same thread as messages from genuine bank appear.

Such push payment frauds are on increase in the UK where the customers, believing the scam message as legitimate, click on the message link thereby compromising with their personal financial details and even losing money.

What the new system promises?

The new SMS Phishguard system will allow all interested banks to register their text message headers with the telecom operator.

The process will prevent the fraudsters from sending the messages with the same text header.

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SMS Phishguard initiative will enable the customers to determine genuine messages and reduce push payment frauds in the UK. The service is expected to be launched early next year.

The effort is led by the trade association for mobile network operators Mobile UK. Messaging trade body Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) and trade association for the banking sector UK Finance are also part of the initiate.

Mobile UK head of policy and communications Gareth Elliott told the FT that the register of banks was ‘currently live and being populated’ and will ‘root out those that are fraudulent’.

In the first six months of this year, there were around 35,000 incidents of push payment frauds in the UK costing around £145m to the customers.