SINGAPORE - The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will consider making it mandatory for online platforms such as Meta to deploy their staff at the police’s Anti-Scam Command (ASCom), said Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam on May 7.
Having staff of such platforms deployed at ASCom has allowed the police to take down scam accounts or listings on their sites quicker.
Mr Shanmugam said this in a written parliamentary reply in response to Mr Derrick Goh’s (Nee Soon GRC) question on how the ministry can better facilitate the learning of anti-scam best practices among e-commerce platforms.
The minister noted that online shopping platforms Carousell and Shopee had deployed their staff to ASCom since the first quarter of 2024. “This has allowed the police to screen... scam accounts in real time, improve the turnaround time by platforms to take down these scam accounts or listings, and strengthen the working relationship between the police and the platforms,” added Mr Shanmugam.
Mr Goh asked if there has been a shift in Meta’s stance since calls were made for it to step up its anti-scam measures.
In response, Mr Shanmugam said MHA has been speaking to Meta regularly on the requirements of the Online Criminal Harms Act, particularly regarding the upcoming codes of practice for designated online service providers.
MHA had earlier said that these codes of practice, which aim to strengthen partnerships with online services to counter scams and malicious cyber activities, will come into force at a later stage.
Mr Shanmugam said: “Meta is aware of the timeline for the Codes to be introduced and the Government’s expectations. We will not hesitate to take designated online service providers to task if they do not comply with the Codes’ requirements.”
In February, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling called out Meta for repeatedly refusing to have safeguards on its platforms to tackle the scam scourge.
Ms Sun had said during the ministry’s budget debate that Facebook Marketplace, which Meta runs, is the only platform among those rated in the ministry’s anti-scam safety ratings that has not implemented the recommended safety features.
As part of the E-commerce Marketplace Transaction Safety Ratings, ratings are assigned to e-commerce platforms based on the extent to which they have implemented critical anti-scam features.
Ms Sun said that Meta had consistently pushed back against MHA’s recommendations for it to put in place safeguards to combat e-commerce scams on Facebook, such as verifying users against government-issued ID and offering a secured payment option for Marketplace users.
In response, Meta said it was “dismayed” by the statements made by Ms Sun.
The tech giant told ST: “We believe in constructive dialogue and have been in close consultations with MHA and are reviewing their suggestions seriously.”
Scam victims in Singapore lost $651.8 million in 2023 – bringing the tally to more than $2.3 billion lost to scams since 2019. The total number of scam cases here hit a record high in 2023, with 46,563 cases reported.
E-commerce scams were the second scam of concern in 2023 as the number of cases more than doubled, with 9,783 cases and at least $13.9 million lost, up from around 4,700 in 2022.
