US cancelled visa-waiver for Singapore? Not true

US cancelled visa-waiver for Singapore? Not true

Have you come across rumours that the United States will be cancelling its visa-waiver policy for Singaporeans? 

Well, it's untrue. 

The US Embassy has come out to clarify the rumour on its Facebook page, saying "we are aware of rumors circulating regarding changes to the Visa Waiver Program for Singapore. There has been no change to the policy for Singaporeans traveling to the United States."

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/singapore.usembassy/posts/10158790093785184[/embed]

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The embassy reiterated that citizens or nationals of participating countries of the programme can travel to the US for up to 90 days without first obtaining a visa, when they meet certain requirements.

The rumour surfaced after one report claimed that US President Donald Trump would be calling off the Visa Waiver Program for Singaporeans from July 1. It was circulated on social media. 

Check the name of the website and URL. They are different. Photo: Screengrab

If you come across such stories on your social media feed, here are some steps you can take to double check if the news is true or false. 

1. Check with the relevant authorities such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' website and the US Embassy's website or Facebook page.

2. Take a closer look at the name of the website and the URL. If they are different, it should set off alarm bells that the site could be bogus.

In this case, the website has a masthead called "Global News", but it's domain URL is "glonews360.com".

(There is a news website also called Global News that's based out of Canada, by the way.)

3. If you want to take a step further, you can do a Domain Name Search on websites like this to find out who owns the domain name. 

When we ran a search of glonews360.com through the tool, we found that it is registered to wildwestdomains.com.

Photo: Screengrab

Sounds dodgy? It probably is. 

maryanns@sph.com.sg

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