SINGAPORE \u2013 The authorities are reviewing Meta\u2019s efforts to tackle government official impersonation scams, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Nov 1. <\/p>\n
In response to queries from The Straits Times, MHA added that it submitted documentation to the Online Criminal Harms Act (Ocha) Competent Authority on Oct 31. <\/p>\n
The authority will \u201creview the documentation and assess Meta\u2019s compliance\u201d with an implementation directive, it said. <\/p>\n
Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, was issued the <\/p>\n directive under Ocha by the police on Sept 24<\/p>\n <\/a>. <\/p>\n Under the directive, it was required to implement measures to target scam advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages impersonating key government office-holders on the social media platform.<\/p>\n Failure to comply with the directive by Sept 30 would result in a fine of up to $1 million. <\/p>\n On top of this, there is a $100,000 daily fine in the case of a continuing offence.<\/p>\n This was the first time such an order was issued by the police to an online platform to tackle scams.<\/p>\n The directive was issued due to the increasing number of scammers exploiting Facebook to run impersonation scams using videos or images of key government office-holders in fake advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages, said MHA in September. <\/p>\n It added that Facebook was the top platform used by scammers to commit such scams.<\/p>\n Although it acknowledged that Meta had taken some steps to address the risk of impersonation scams globally, the authorities remained concerned about the prevalence of such scams in Singapore.<\/p>\n MHA said in September that the authorities were considering imposing similar requirements on other online platforms, with more details to be announced later. <\/p>\n In the first six months of 2025, victims lost $126.5 million to scams, nearly double the $67.2 million lost in the first half of 2024.<\/p>\n Police mid-year statistics showed that\u00a0<\/p>\n government official impersonation scams\u00a0have almost tripled,<\/p>\n <\/a> with\u00a01,762 cases reported in the first half of 2025 compared with 589 over the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/picture><\/div>\n