Singapore Gives Platforms January Deadline For Anti-Scam Controls
Singapore is requiring messaging services to restrict unknown contacts and social platforms to verify advertisers under anti-scam rules that carry a January 31, 2027 compliance deadline.
Singapore has moved online scam controls from public warnings into mandatory platform rules, with messaging services required to limit unknown contacts and social media companies ordered to verify advertisers, The Economic Times carried on Tuesday.
The policy change applies under the Online Criminal Harms Act to services that Singapore police identified as posing the highest scam risk.
The enforcement frame follows losses of more than $2.8 billion from scams between 2020 and the first half of 2025, a figure Home Affairs Minister Sim Ann gave to parliament last November.
Unknown Contacts Face Consent Rules
Investment scams are the immediate focus for messaging platforms.
Police described a pattern in which scammers use accounts previously unknown to victims to offer lucrative investment products, a common route into online romance and crypto investment fraud.
The consent requirement spans seven communications products: WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime, plus Google Messages and Google Meet.
Unknown accounts will not be able to place users into group spaces or channels without permission.
The same services must warn users about suspicious accounts and give users tools to silence, filter or block communications.
Ad Verification Covers Meta And TikTok
A separate code covers Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Those platforms must block suspected scam advertisements, verify advertiser identities against government records and tie promotions for financial products aimed at Singapore users to providers with the required licences.
The police statement put the advertising rules in numerical terms.
Across 2025, those three social platforms were linked to roughly three in ten scam cases in the city-state, with Facebook representing close to 18 per cent on its own.
E-commerce services are also pulled into the anti-scam programme.
Carousell, Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Business will be required to introduce stronger login safeguards, broadening the rules from messaging and ads into marketplace-account security.
Platforms Have Until January 2027
Most platform obligations carry a January 31, 2027 compliance deadline.
Measures against spoofing, including imitation of the Singapore government, must be in place by the end of September.
Non-compliance can bring financial penalties of up to 1 million Singapore dollars, or about $782,500.
Singapore has also intensified public education against scams and approved mandatory caning of up to 24 strokes for serious scam offences in recent years, making the platform rules part of a broader enforcement push against online fraud.
