Text messages from a name rather than number

[Protagoras]

I've received multiple text messages from alpha-tag 'VirginMedia' rather than a number.

The message is about a supposed 'outage update', but I'm not even a customer!

This got me wondering, how easy is it to generate text messages with fake alpha-tags? I thought that the use of these was controlled ...

[ladymuck]

https://thesmsworks.co.uk/blog/sms-sender-id/

Quite interesting stuff. Looks like you could set up a free trial with a SMS provider and spam to your heart's content.