Dealing with SMS Spoofing

Question

Hello,

I'm working on a web service that would use an SMS gateway to receive instructions from customers. Since this would be a commercial product I would like to implement a safeguard to protect our system from SMS spoofs. I don't want people impersonating others by spoofing their number.

I've noticed that Twitter allows people to tweet through text messages, how can they make sure that messages are actually genuine?

Is this possible, and if so how do I accomplish this? Or should I ignore this and just deal with it through support should they get through.

Thanks

Answer 1

How do users spoof their numbers? Every service I've seen that allows users to interact from their phone requires a validation process first (like this). And carriers won't let you send messages through their system from a device they don't know. SMS gateways also provide safeguards to prevent spoofing. So I'm not sure how big a problem this will be for you. I would worry about it once you start encountering it.