Exercise caution if you receive SMS labelled as 'Likely-SCAM' from Jan. 31: IMDA

This will apply to non-registered SMSes.

Alfie Kwa | January 28, 2023, 02:25 PM

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From Jan. 31, non-registered SMS will be labelled as “Likely-SCAM”, said Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in a press release on Wednesday (Jan. 25).

This is part of the measures, announced by IMDA in October last year, that all organisations that send SMS using alphanumeric Sender IDs need to register with the Singapore SMS Sender ID Registry (“SSIR”) by January 2023.

"This registration is to better protect consumers against non-registered SMS that may be scams," the authority said.

Organisations are advised to register

IMDA said that as of January this year, more than 1,200 organisations, using more than 2,600 SMS Sender IDs, have already registered.

This includes financial institutions, e-commerce operators, logistics providers, and SMEs that send SMS to their customers.

They have also reached out to organisations through aggregators and associations such as the Singapore Business Federation, the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Banks in Singapore, to encourage them to sign up for the SSIR over the past few months.

IMDA advises organisations which have not registered their Sender IDs to do so.

Those that use alphanumeric Sender IDs must register early with the SSIR to give adequate time as non-registered SMS Sender IDs after Jan. 31 will be labelled as “Likely-SCAM”.

Fighting scams

The new mandatory SSIR regime is an ongoing approach to strengthening protection against scams.

This has been done with the telecom operators to reduce scam calls and SMS coming through the communication networks.

IMDA shared that since the setting up of the SSIR in March 2022, there was a 64 per cent decrease in scams through SMS from Q4 2021 to Q2 2022.

Scam cases perpetrated via SMS made up around 8 per cent of scam reports in Q2 2022, down from 10 per cent in 2021.

Image via IMDA.