# What is smishing?

> Smishing (SMS phishing) is a fraud technique where attackers send SMS impersonating banks, government agencies, or delivery services to trick recipients into clicking malicious links, revealing credentials, or paying fake fees. Because people are conditioned to trust and act quickly on SMS from brands, smishing is highly effective. Defence is layered: operator SMS firewalls, sender-ID registration and anti-spoofing, URL reputation, and subscriber education.

- Canonical URL: https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-smishing
- Language: en
- Last reviewed: 2026-07-22
- Publisher: BroadNet (https://www.broadnet.me)

## Why smishing works

SMS is a trusted, high-open-rate channel, messages are short and urgent ('your parcel is held', 'confirm this transaction'), and the sender field is easy to spoof on grey routes — so a fake 'from' can mimic a real bank. The combination of trust, time-pressure, and spoofability makes smishing one of the most cost-effective attacks going. See /answers/what-is-sender-id-spoofing and /answers/what-is-grey-route-sms.

## How operators fight it

The operator SMS firewall inspects content and URLs, enforces sender-ID whitelists, blocks known malicious shorteners, and shares fraud intelligence through GSMA channels. Verified-sender channels such as RCS Business Messaging remove spoofing entirely by cryptographically binding the brand to the message. See /operators/sms-firewall and /answers/what-is-rcs-business-messaging.

## Related

- [All answers](https://www.broadnet.me/answers)
- [Glossary](https://www.broadnet.me/answers)
- [What is sender ID spoofing?](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-sender-id-spoofing)
- [What is a grey route in SMS?](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-grey-route-sms)
- [What is RCS Business Messaging (RBM)?](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-rcs-business-messaging)
- [What is an SMS firewall?](https://www.broadnet.me/answers/what-is-sms-firewall)
- [SMS Firewall (operators)](https://www.broadnet.me/operators/sms-firewall)
- [SS7 Firewall](https://www.broadnet.me/operators/ss7-firewall)
- [Anti-fraud SMS](https://www.broadnet.me/operators/anti-fraud-sms)