Dear Alibaba Cloud users,
To combat SMS fraud and phishing attacks, the Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) in Hong Kong requires telecommunications service providers, major banks, and individual government departments to add a "#" prefix when registering alphanumeric sender IDs.
For SMS messages sent to Hong Kong, if you need to use a sender ID with a "#" prefix, please refer to the following content to apply for registration with OFCA. After registration is complete, you can use the sender ID with the "#" prefix to send SMS messages in Alibaba Cloud SMS. For more information, visit the OFCA official website.
To enhance transparency and combat SMS spam, The Office of the Communications Authority (“OFCA”) issued the “Guidelines on Registration of Sender IDs and Sending of Short Messages and Multimedia Messages” (“Guidelines”) in October 2023 (revised on April 2024) to implement the Short Message Service (SMS) Sender Registration Scheme ("Scheme") from 28 Dec 2023. This scheme allows businesses and organizations to register their alphanumeric SMS Sender IDs with a “#” prefix (#SMSSenderID). Only the businesses or organisations that have been registered as Registered Senders are able to send SMS using their Registered SMS Sender IDs with a prefix "#", so that members of the public who receive SMS in Hong Kong can identify if such SMS is from a Registered Sender.
Companies or organisations interested in joining the Scheme may visit OFCA's website for details and submit their completed application forms together with the required information to OFCA. OFCA will review the application and the SMS Sender ID(s) that can be used for registration if the application is approved. OFCA maintains a SMS Sender Registry showing records of Registered Senders and their corresponding Sender IDs for public information.