August 21, 2024
SINGAPORE – All agencies from the island republic have a close working relationship with their Malaysian counterparts when it comes to combating fake news and scams, says Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information Janil Puthucheary.
He said this includes their operational agencies, politicians and civil service.
“We cooperate not just in terms of the concepts, but actually in terms of specific cases and operations,” he said, adding that Singapore has a joint Anti-Scam Command where all of their local partners sit together, thinking through policies and on an operational basis.
“Malaysia also has an Anti-Scam Command. That cross-border relationship is then the next layer.
“When dealing with this (scams), we have to think through not just what happens within our borders, but how our agency offices and our operational systems interface with their counterparts across Asean,” he told reporters during a Malaysian Journalists Visit Programme to Singapore recently.
On their latest measure to tackle scams in Singapore, he said it was to aggregate Government SMSes.
“So SMSes were often a route of hijack for scams, and so we want to aggregate as many of the government services so that there is a trusted address from which you receive government SMSes.
“So if you receive an SMS from anybody else, that’s pretending to be the Government, you double check and see whether or not it’s likely true,” he added.
It was reported that from July 1, all SMSes from Singapore’s government agencies come from a single sender ID known as gov.sg, instead of the individual organisations.
The move is aimed at helping the public identify authentic government SMSes and to guard against government official impersonation scams
Janil explained that they also have technical measures to deal with scams including flagging calls coming in whether its a spoof or scam call.
“Such calls either gets blocked at the telecommunications company side or highlighted at the users’ side.
He added that such measures make it more difficult for scammers to connect with the end user.
Asked about when a scam is committed, he said that they take the approach across a number of domains.
“We have to have a digital ministry here working together with the police and our Ministry of Home Affairs. We also have a very close partnership with the banks and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.”
He stressed on the importance of public education, especially on the importance of simple cyber hygiene measures including not sharing your password, not sharing your OTP and never trusting a deal that sounds too good to be true especially online.
Based on statistics from the Singapore Police Force (SPF), there were 46,563 scam cases with losses of S$651.8(RM2.28bil) in 2023.
The top scams in Singapore involve fake jobs, e-commerce, fake friend calls, phishing and fake investment.