Police issue directives to Apple and Google to curb spoofing of government agencies on iMessage and Google Messages

Apple and Google have been directed by the police to put in place measures to prevent the spoofing of Singapore Government agencies via iMessage and Google Messages by Nov 30.

This comes amid over 120 cases involving the impersonation of SingPost, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in a statement on Tuesday (Nov 25).

MHA added that the police have also seen scams involving the impersonation of other SMS sender ID registry-registered (SSIR) sender identities on Apple's iMessage and Google Messages. 

Government agencies have been using the "gov.sg" SSIR to send SMSes since July 2024. 

This helped to protect the public from impersonation scams by allowing the public to identify legitimate government SMSes easily.

Those measures currently do not apply to messages sent via iMessage and Google Messages.

MHA said that while government agencies do not use the "gov.sg" ID to send messages via iMessage and Google Messages, members of the public may assume that messages they receive from accounts claiming to be from "gov.sg" on the two said chat messaging platforms are legitimate because they are not easily distinguishable from SMSes.

Measures to be taken by Apple and Google

According to MHA, Apple and Google have indicated that they will comply with the implementation directives issued to them.

They will implement two measures in compliance with the directives:

• Preventing accounts and group chats from displaying names which spoof "gov.sg" or Singapore Government agencies, or filtering messages from accounts and group chats with names which spoof "gov.sg" or Singapore Government agencies.
• Ensuring that the profile names of unknown senders are not displayed or are displayed less prominently than their phone numbers. 

MHA also urged members of public to regularly update the iMessage and Google Messages apps on their mobile devices to ensure that the latest anti-spoofing safeguards are in place.

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editor@asiaone.com