Singapore police have
ordered Meta to implement anti-scam measures against
advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages
impersonating key government office holders on its social media
network Facebook to combat scams, a government minister said.
The company could be fined up to S$1 million ($775,698) if
it fails to comply as part of the first such order under the
nation’s new Online Criminal Harms Act, which came into force in
February 2024.
“We are issuing (the order) to Meta because Facebook is the
top platform used by scammers for such impersonation scams, and
the police has assessed that more decisive action is required to
curb these scams,” Minister of State for Home Affairs Goh Pei
Ming said in a speech on Wednesday.
In August, Singapore’s home affairs ministry found that more
than a third of all e-commerce scams reported in 2024 were
perpetrated on Facebook. It also rated Facebook Marketplace as
the weakest among six e-commerce marketplaces in terms of
anti-scam features deployed.
A Meta spokesperson said on Wednesday that the company had
specialised systems to detect impersonating accounts, including
facial recognition technology, and it had invested heavily in
improving detection and review teams. It also shares tips on
avoiding scams and offers tools to report potential violations,
the spokesperson said.
“We also rolled out advertiser verification and continue
working with law enforcement and take legal action against the
criminals behind these scams,” they added.
Police statistics released in August showed that scams that
involved the impersonation of government officials almost
tripled to 1,762 cases in the first half of 2025, from 589 cases
in the same period a year ago. A total of S$126.5 million was
lost to this type of scam in the same period, up 88% from the
S$67.2 million lost a year ago.
The home affairs ministry acknowledged Facebook Marketplace
has required “enhanced user verification measures” for select
sellers in Singapore since 2024, and that it introduced
in-product safety notices, as well as anti-scam notices within
its messaging functions to warn users of the risk of e-commerce
scams.
Those measures were deployed after earlier criticism by the
government over the company’s failure to put in place safeguards<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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