Derrick Goh on fighting scams effectively in the digital age

Mr Derrick Goh (Nee Soon): Mdm Chair, Singapore is well-known for its physical safety and security. We should uphold this reputation in the digital sphere too – so our residents and businesses can truly thrive within.

MHA has made significant strides in fighting scams. From the Anti-Scam Command to the ScamShield app and new legislation, such as the Online Criminal Harms Act, they reflect MHA’s commitment to enhancing its capabilities against scams.

Thanks to such efforts, scam losses stayed flat at $650 million last year. However, the amount remains significant and of worry is the steep increase of cases by 46% to 46,000.

I previously emphasised the importance of having a concerted “all-hands-on-deck” approach by every stakeholder in the digital ecosystem, which has been crucial in preventing worser outcomes. I commend the combined efforts of MHA, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, banks and telecom companies in reducing phishing scams and swiftly reduced malware scams.

Nevertheless, scams that account for the majority of cases and biggest losses are those that exploit victims’ emotions and psychology, for them to authorise and willingly part with their money. These include jobs, e-commerce and fake friend scams. While public vigilance is key to deal with the scourge of scams, our agencies must be more proactive too in monitoring and analysis – to be even more agile and responsive towards new exploitative scam typologies together with partners.

I have three questions against this backdrop.

One, given the success of the Anti-Scam Command in working with banks to stem the flow of monies from phishing scams, will MHA consider establishing similar partnerships with platform companies, such as Meta and Carousell, to swiftly disrupt and investigate tainted e-commerce and messaging accounts?

Two, how can MHA be even more proactive in leveraging trends and insights for smarter deployment of anti-scam resources, to pre-empt and mitigate exploitative scam types? For example, the expectation of concert ticket scams related to a foreseeably high-demand performance; or job scams related to popular job categories or activities that seem to earn easy money.

Three, what are new plans and strategies MHA will adopt to further equip the SPF and related agencies to deal with scams perpetrated by new technologies, such as AI?

Watch the speech here.