Just over three months ago, Telstra launched its 7226 (SCAM) number for reporting SMS and MMS scams.

The company invited its subscribers – and those of MVNOs such as Aldi Mobile, Belong, Boost, Lycamobile, Pennytel and Woolworths – to forward any scam messages they receive to help block similar texts and MMSes.

So far, almost 50,000 text messages have been sent to 7226 (SCAM). That's not very many given the number of customers and the frequency with which scam texts seem to arrive, but according to Telstra it is around double the SMS/MMS reports made to Scamwatch.

And it appears that a significant number of those that were forwarded weren't scams: "While we applaud customers for their dedication to dobbing in those dodgy texts, we have noticed some of the messages sent to 7226 can't be actioned by our cyber team. We get that you would receive the odd annoying text – from legitimate marketing SMS messages to confirmations of your Friday takeaway delivery – however these don't count as malicious and we wouldn't block them," said Telstra.

To help improve Telstra's ability to block scams, the company encourages customers to use 7226 (SCAM) but makes the following requests:

1. Forward the original message to 7226. Do not send screengrabs. If you don't know how to forward messages, Telstra provides instructions here.

2. Forward messages as quickly as possible, as most SMS scams only last a matter of minutes or hours.

3. Only forward messages that you believe to be scams. The service is not for reporting spam or legitimate marketing messages, and Telstra's security staff really don't want to see the memes you've been sent.