Fake Singtel SMS offering Apple Watch, AirPods claims 12 victims who lost $20k

SINGAPORE - At least 12 people have fallen prey in June to a scam involving a fake Singtel SMS containing fraudulent links, with losses amounting to $20,000, the police said on Wednesday.

In this scam, victims would receive an unsolicited SMS urging them to redeem expiring Singtel points for rewards such as an Apple Watch or Apple AirPods supposedly on offer.

The SMS would state that the points were expiring on the day itself.

The selected reward item could then be redeemed only by topping up a nominal amount of cash, such as one dollar, along with the Singtel points.

The victims would be asked to key in their credit card details and one-time password on a fake Singtel webpage in order to make the payment. Victims realised they had been scammed only when unauthorised transactions were made with overseas merchants.

Singtel had posted an alert on its scam advisory page alerting customers to the scam on June 9, as well as on its social media platforms.

In the alert, the telco had advised customers not to click on the link and urged them to delete the message immediately.

A Singtel spokesman told The Straits Times that it had put up the alert as soon as it heard about the issue on June 9.

“It is extremely concerning to see our consumers falling victim to scammers impersonating our company. 

“Regrettably, with increased digitalisation, such incidents are growing in sophistication and pervasiveness around the world as scammers devise new ways to target consumers,” he said, adding that the telco is constantly upgrading its capabilities to identify such phishing scams and prevent them from reaching customers.

This is done through an SMS firewall making use of machine learning, generative artificial intelligence and large language models, which detect and block scam SMSes based on suspicious traffic patterns.

Each month, Singtel intercepts and blocks more than 30 million scam calls and 20 million scam SMSes, said the spokesman.

Singtel customers who are unsure about the authenticity of links sent to them should call Singtel on 1688 or visit its scam advisory page www.singtel.com/secured to verify the information.

The police said that the public can take precautionary measures to avoid falling prey to scams. They can download the ScamShield app and set security features on their mobile device to enable two-factor or multi-factor authentication for banks.

They can also set limits on Internet banking transactions.

Fraudulent transactions should be reported to the bank immediately. For more information on scams, the public can visit

www.scamalert.sg

or call the Anti-Scam Helpline on 1800-722-6688.