Singapore police have ordered Meta to implement anti-scam measures against advertisements, accounts, profiles and business pages impersonating key government office holders on its social media network Facebook to combat scams, a government minister said.
Advertisement
The company could be fined up to S$1 million (US$775,698) if it fails to comply as part of the first such order under the nation’s new Online Criminal Harms Act, which came into force in February 2024.
“We are issuing [the order] to Meta because Facebook is the top platform used by scammers for such impersonation scams, and the police have assessed that more decisive action is required to curb these scams,” Minister of State for Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming said in a speech on Wednesday.
Meta did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
In August, Singapore’s home affairs ministry found that more than a third of all e-commerce scams reported in 2024 were perpetrated on Facebook. It also rated Facebook Marketplace as the weakest among six e-commerce marketplaces in terms of anti-scam features deployed.
Advertisement
Police statistics released in August showed that scams involving the impersonation of government officials almost tripled to 1,762 cases in the first half of 2025, from 589 cases in the same period a year ago. A total of S$126.5 million was lost to this type of scam in the same period, up 88 per cent from the S$67.2 million lost a year ago.