SINGAPORE – Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong has warned members of the public of scam messages that claim to be from Singapore Customs after receiving some himself.
In a Facebook post on Sept 22, Mr Lee said he recently received a flurry of SMSes supposedly from Singapore Customs informing him of a detained parcel.
He thought the messages were real at first because they had an alphanumeric sender and not a telephone number, he wrote.
“…I knew that now that we have the SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR), only legitimate senders can use alphanumeric IDs,” he said.
“But messages from all Singapore Government ministries and agencies are using gov.sg as the sender ID (https://www.sms.gov.sg/), and these messages did not.”
Instead they seemed to come from unknown, strange e-mail addresses, said SM Lee, who concluded that these were scam messages.
As he wondered how the scam messages could get through the SSIR system, he said the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore explained that the SSIR protection covers only SMSes sent through the telcos, and not online messaging applications such as iMessage on Apple phones, or Rich Communication Services (RCS) on Android phones.
“Apple or Android then merges these text messages with other SMSes, where you and I can easily mistake them to be from legitimate registered senders,” he added.
He advised members of the public not to respond to messages sent via online messaging applications until the sender’s identity can be verified.
“The sender may not be a telephone number but an email address or some other alphanumeric ID, but that does not mean they are genuine,” he said.
If in doubt, verify the authenticity of the information with the organisation directly, he added.
“Lastly, share with your loved ones the scam tactics that are circulating, so they do not fall prey to these criminals.”
In June, he warned Singaporeans against deepfake scams after he was again depicted promoting investment products in one such scam. In the deepfake video, he was seen asking viewers to sign up for an investment product that claims to give guaranteed returns.