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The Police would like to alert members of the public to phishing scams involving the impersonation of DBS fraud investigators or Shopee e-commerce support personnel, where scammers send iMessage alerts claiming that a pending transaction requires urgent verification and urge recipients to call a fraudulent hotline. 

In this scam variant, victims would receive unsolicited iMessages that appeared to be sent by either DBS or Shopee, stating that a transaction is pending with a fraudulent hotline number listed within the message for victims to enquire more about the transaction. Upon calling the hotline, victims were told that their payment card details have been compromised and they would need to provide their card details and their One-Time Password (OTP) to assist with verification. Victims would only realise that they had been scammed upon noticing unauthorised transactions made to their cards or bank accounts, or unauthorised logins to their e-commerce account.

Members of the public are reminded that banks and legitimate service providers will never request for disclosure of credit card or login information via phone calls. Any unsolicited message or call requesting OTPs, passwords or banking credentials should be treated as suspicious. The public should verify any such claims by checking the transaction directly in the official mobile banking app, online banking portal or contact the bank through the hotline listed on its official website.

The Police would like to advise the public to adopt the following precautionary measures:

• ADD - Add the ScamShield App to block scam calls and filter suspicious messages, and enable two-factor authentication for your banking apps and set up transaction limits for internet banking transactions, including PayNow.
  
  
• CHECK – Check the authenticity of any iMessage alert by logging into your bank’s official app or website. You may check the legitimacy of suspicious messages, phone numbers, and website links via the ScamShield Website at www.scamshield.gov.sg.
  
  
• TELL - Tell the authorities, family and friends about the scam, and report any fraudulent messages to your bank immediately and report the messages to through the in-app reporting functions. 

Members of the public are advised to update their iMessage settings by ensuring that Filer Unknow Senders and Filer Spam are turned on (refer to Annex B), and to report suspicious messages using the in-app reporting function (Annex C) to protect themselves against such scams. 

Anyone with information on such scams may call the Police Hotline at 1800-255-0000 or submit information online at www.police.gov.sg/i-witness. If you require urgent Police assistance, please dial ‘999’, For more information on scams, members of the public can visit www.scamshield.gov.sg or call the ScamShield Helpline at 1799. Fighting scams is a community effort. Together, we can ACT Against Scams to keep our community safe.

Annex A

Images of Phishing Messages

Annex B

Steps to Activate “Screen Unknown Senders” and “Filter Spam”<sup>1

1</sup>Steps extracted from https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iph203ab0be4/ios

Annex C

Steps to Delete and Report Scam on iMessage<sup>2

2</sup>Steps extracted from https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iph3f94d910d/ios