Singapore’s authorities have directed Meta to adopt anti-scam measures targeting advertisements, accounts, profiles, and business pages that impersonate prominent government officials on its Facebook platform, reports Reuters.
The initiative is aimed at tackling the rising incidence of scams.
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Failure to comply with this directive could result in fines of up to S$1m ($775,698), marking the first enforcement action under the recently enacted Online Criminal Harms Act, which took effect in February 2024.
Singapore State Home Affairs Goh Pei Ming stated, “We are issuing (the order) to Meta because Facebook is the top platform used by scammers for such impersonation scams, and the police has assessed that more decisive action is required to curb these scams.”
Meta has not yet provided a response to requests for comment regarding this order, the report said.
In August, the Ministry of Home Affairs reported that more than one-third of e-commerce scams recorded in 2024 were conducted via Facebook.
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By GlobalDataThe platform was also identified as having the weakest anti-scam features among six e-commerce marketplaces evaluated.
Recent police data revealed a surge in scams involving impersonation of government officials, with cases rising from 589 in the first half of 2024 to 1,762 in the same timeframe in 2025.
The financial losses attributed to these scams reached S$126.5m, an increase of 88% from the S$67.2m lost in the previous year.
The Ministry of Home Affairs noted that Facebook Marketplace has implemented “enhanced user verification measures” for certain sellers in Singapore since 2024.
Additionally, the platform has introduced in-product safety alerts and anti-scam notifications within its messaging services to inform users about the risks associated with e-commerce scams.
These actions followed prior criticism from the government regarding Meta’s insufficient safeguards to protect users from fraudulent activities.
In February 2024, former Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling remarked that the company had “consistently pushed back” against the ministry’s suggestions for implementing measures such as user verification against government-issued identification and providing secure payment options to mitigate e-commerce scams on the platform.
