iPhone messaging lameness

I like my iPhone, but today I discovered another behavior I'm not too thrilled about. I didn't realize that people can send email directly to your iPhone. I'm used to connecting to Gmail with the Mail client if I want to receive email. I saw in someone's post that you can email directly using someone's phone number "@txt.att.net" (ex. 5551234567@txt.att.net).

I tried it out from my Gmail account through the web browser, and sure enough, I got this SMS message.

FRM: My "From" Name
SUBJ: test
MSG: does this work?

However, all it says is that it came from some non-descript number. I was able to successfully reply to it and received it in my Gmail Inbox.

That's fine and all, but that's an odd way to get a message. Someone could change their "From" full name in their mail client and send deceiving emails, since there is no way to verify the actual sender.