Mr. Richard Walsh:

I am not sure how they are acquiring the mobile numbers, but as regards impersonating SMSs, I think any of us here could bulk-buy SMSs online. Part of that is choosing the name that you want to send the texts under. Fraudsters are sending texts under the name of Revenue, for example. In the past, they were putting in the names of the banks. We have since run a project that has reserved the names of the banks, and they cannot be used. We have seen a dramatic drop in the number that are mimicking the banks. Again, we are engaging with ComReg to see how we can tighten that up much further. I am not sure how fraudsters represent the actual mobile numbers , but I suspect that it is something similar to being able to choose, in a text, who you want the message to appear to come from. The service is not necessarily there to be fraudulent; it is there perhaps to be helpful, but a customer may have used the fraudulent one.