Half of Singapore scams happen via WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram

On a Facebook group for Filipino expats in Singapore, a post about used electronics and furniture looked legit. So Joel asked about a laptop and an iPhone 14 and was asked for a deposit of 800 Singapore dollars ($592). He asked for a cellphone number to transfer the money, and that’s when the alarm bells started ringing, he said.

“I realized the account had a different name than the person I was messaging,” said Joel, who asked to be given only his first name because he was wary of scammers. Rest of the worldSuspicious, Joel insisted on cash on delivery. The user said he would accept a deposit of S$100 for items valued at S$1,250. Joel refused, and the user went silent.

“I narrowly avoided falling victim to a scam, but I saw similar posts in multiple Facebook groups,” he said. “Facebook should do more to search these posts and see if they are legitimate,” he said, adding that he reported the username and account to the platform multiple times. It took several weeks for the account to be deleted.

Singapore’s nearly 6 million residents are among the most common targets for fraudsters — and many aren’t as lucky as Joel. A record 46,563 frauds were reported last year, according to police, up almost 50% from the previous year. Some 652 million Singapore dollars ($480 million) were lost to fraudsters last year.

E-commerce scams — where goods and services advertised online are not delivered after payment — are the second most common scams after employment scams in Singapore, according to police. Almost 10,000 such cases were reported last year, twice as many as the previous year. Meta platforms — Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — accounted for almost half of them, according to the government.

More than 80% of Singapore’s population uses Facebook. Facebook Marketplace ranked last in a government index of e-commerce platform security ratings in the country. Amazon, Lazada and Shopee topped the table, where six companies were ranked according to “the extent to which they have implemented measures that are essential to protecting against fraud.” These include verifying users’ identities against government-issued documentation, providing secure payment solutions and remediating losses for users. Facebook Marketplace is “the only platform … that has not implemented recommended security features,” Singapore’s inter-ministerial fraud committee said in a report.

In March of this year, a lower-level minister criticized Meta for not installing recommended safeguards. Meta responded by saying the scams were “complex” and that it had strict policies that prohibited malicious activity.

Meta supports the Singapore government’s efforts to combat online fraud and continues to work closely with the police to address this issue, the spokesman said. Rest of the world“In addition to raising awareness about scams and fraud, we will be rolling out several initiatives, including verification measures that we are testing for Facebook and Marketplace ads,” the spokesperson said.

Financial frauds — including advance payment scams — are on the rise around the world as people embrace new technologies, and scammers stole more than $1 trillion from victims last year, Interpol said in a report. Singapore is taking strong legal action. The Online Criminal Damage Act came into effect in February this year, and its directives to “combat fraud and malicious acts in cyberspace” came into effect in June.

Online services at the highest risk of e-commerce fraud in Singapore include Facebook Marketplace, Facebook ads and Facebook pages, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. It has asked service providers to implement user verification requirements and assessed measures to verify the identities of “risky sellers” on Facebook Marketplace between June 1 and November 30. “If the number of e-commerce frauds reported on Marketplace does not significantly decrease, the MHA will require Facebook to verify the identities of all sellers on Marketplace by March 1, 2025,” it said in a statement.

Munira Mustaffa, executive director of security consultancy Chasseur Group, said anti-crime laws may have limited effectiveness in deterring criminals Rest of the world“This is likely why policymakers in Singapore are shifting their efforts toward pressuring tech companies to comply with regulations and implement projects to create a safer online environment,” she said. “However, these efforts are almost certainly underfunded relative to the scale of the problem, (given) the significant financial resources these companies could potentially devote if they were willing or required to do so.”

Facebook removed about 631 million fake accounts globally in the first quarter of 2024 alone, the data showed. Fake accounts made up about 4% of monthly active users globally during that period, it said. There was no data available for Singapore.

E-commerce companies in Singapore have issued warnings to users and implemented measures such as preventing users from sharing mobile numbers and email addresses on the app and withholding payments in escrow until items are received. Authorities have also set up a fraud hotline, as well as a WhatsApp service to help residents verify suspicious messages, images and videos.

Cross-border transactions pose another challenge, said Nydia Ngiow, managing director of advisory firm BowerGroupAsia Rest of the world“Even cybercrime laws are limited to local jurisdictions, which may not be enough to address the transnational nature of today’s fraud,” she said. Still, “tech companies sometimes need a catalyst, i.e. legislation, before they take action against fraud. Legislation can play a key role as a deterrent because it sends a clear signal of consequences and punishment.”

With scams on the rise, Singapore police have taken the unusual step of asking e-commerce companies to deploy staff to their Anti-Scam Centres (ASCs). With staff from companies — as well as banks and telecoms — working with police, they can review fraud reports, quickly freeze bank accounts to prevent transfers, and suspend suspicious phone lines and user accounts, they said.

Since the beginning of the year, domestic e-commerce companies Shopee and Carousell have deployed staff to ASCs. “This has allowed police to check … fraudster accounts in real time, shorten the response time of platforms to remove those fraudster accounts or listings, and strengthen the working relationship between police and platforms,” Law Minister K. Shanmugam said in a written parliamentary response. Authorities are considering making such deployments mandatory from online platforms, he said.

This setup worked for Carousell. Earlier this year, the platform suspended Taylor Swift concert ticket sales in all six of its markets — Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan — for about two weeks, a spokesperson said Rest of the world“Our team colleague at ASC received early indications that there was a growing trend of fraud related to the Eras tour and this was likely to increase closer to the tour dates,” the spokesman said. Information provided by police helped the company better assess the “unprecedented scale” of the risk, the spokesman added.

As for Joel, his narrow loss has made him skeptical of e-commerce platforms. From now on, he’ll only trust a site like Amazon, he said. “I think if it looks too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.”