Action against Advertisements of Illegal Remote Gambling or Loan Services on Social Media, SMS and Messaging Apps
Ministry of Home AffairsSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song’s inquiry on how authorities monitor and act against advertisements for illegal remote gambling and loan services on social media and messaging platforms. Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam stated that the Police take enforcement actions upon receiving public complaints, including requesting phone number terminations and illegal content removal. He highlighted joint operations with IMDA against retailers of fraudulently registered SIM cards and emphasized the use of the ScamShield application for reporting spam. Police also track and prosecute perpetrators where possible, while IMDA works with telecommunication providers on technical solutions to reduce advertisement delivery. Through these measures, the government aims to curb the reach of criminal syndicates and protect mobile subscribers from illegal solicitations.
Transcript
26 Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Home Affairs how are the authorities actively monitoring and taking action in relation to advertisements of illegal remote gambling websites or loan services on social media, SMS and other messaging apps.
Mr K Shanmugam: Police will take the necessary enforcement actions when they receive complaints from members of public on advertisements on illegal remote gambling and unlicensed moneylending services. These include forwarding offending phone numbers to the telecommunication service providers to terminate the phone numbers, or to social media platforms to remove the illegal content. Where it is possible to track the identities of the perpetrators, Police will take them to task.
To prevent criminal syndicates from using prepaid SIM cards to send such advertisements, Police also conduct joint enforcement operations with IMDA against errant retailers known to be selling prepaid cards that have been fraudulently pre-registered. The most recent operation took place on 16 August 2020, with 16 shops raided, 10 arrests made, and the seizure of more than 2,800 fraudulently registered prepaid SIM cards.
The public plays an important part in this effort against advertisements of illegal remote gambling and unlicensed moneylending services. Mobile subscribers should block and report messages advertising illegal remote gambling and unlicensed moneylending services using spam filtering functions on their phones or third-party applications. One such application is ScamShield, a mobile application jointly developed by the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and the Government Technology Agency (GovTech). The app is available for free for all iOS users, and we are currently working on the Android version.
IMDA is also working with the telecommunication service providers to explore technical solutions to reduce the delivery of such advertisements.