The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (‘TRAI’) issued Press Release No. 133/2025 dated November 18, 2025, announcing a direction to all access providers requiring mandatory pre-tagging of variable components (such as uniform resource locators, app download links, or callback numbers) in SMS content templates used for commercial communications. Senders must explicitly tag each variable field during template registration to specify its purpose (e.g., #url#), enabling access providers to identify, scrub, and validate content against whitelists.

This measure addresses exploitation of untagged variables for phishing and fraud, where malicious links are inserted into approved templates undetected, leading to financial losses and cyber harm. Principal entities must modify existing templates within 60 days, after which non-compliant messages will be rejected.