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The Police have observed a surge in scams exploiting Apple iMessage. Since June 2026, the Cyber Command has detected and disrupted more than 30,000 Apple iMessage accounts linked to the scam campaign. The Police estimate that scam messages impersonating courier delivery companies have resulted in about $2.2 million in losses, an increase from the $1.2 million reported in the Police’s earlier news release on 5 August 2026.

In this scam variant, scammers send fraudulent iMessages designed to deceive recipients into disabling built-in security features. Victims typically receive iMessages from foreign numbers bearing country codes such as +212 (Morocco), +63 (Philippines), +44 (United Kingdom), or from email addresses made up of random alphanumeric strings. These messages typically impersonated recognised courier companies such as NinjaVan, J&T Express, and SPX Express, etc. The Police have also observed messages impersonating government agencies and financial institutions.

The messages direct recipients to click on links closely resembling the URLs of legitimate courier companies, government agencies, or financial institutions. In some instances, recipients are instructed to reply “Y” or “1” to acknowledge the message. This is likely an attempt to circumvent Apple iMessage’s built-in protection, which renders a link in a message from an unknown sender, unclickable until the recipient interacts with the sender. Once the recipient responds, the embedded link becomes clickable.

Upon clicking the link, victims are redirected to a spoofed website that closely resembles the official websites of courier companies, government agencies or financial institutions, where they are then prompted to make a small payment or pay a fine by entering their card details and/or internet banking credentials, and authorising the transaction using their digital tokens. In some cases, after victims were deceived into providing their One-Time Passwords (OTPs), their credit cards were added to Google Pay or Apple Pay and/or their bank digital tokens were provisioned to unfamiliar devices. Some victims also reported unauthorised logins to their bank accounts from unfamiliar devices. Victims typically discovered they had been scammed only after noticing unauthorised transactions on their cards or bank accounts.

Government agencies and courier companies do not use iMessage in their communications with the public.

Unlike SMSes which are protected through network-level anti-scam filters and the Singapore SMS Sender ID registry efforts, iMessage will not be covered by these measures as they operate on a separate Apple ecosystem. Members of the public are advised to exercise caution when receiving messages via iMessage and to look out for warnings indicating that a message may be spam. The iMessage indicators and warning labels are illustrated below:

Members of the public are advised to update their iMessage settings by verifying that “Filter Unknown Senders” and “Filter Spam” are enabled (refer to Annex B), and to report suspicious messages using the in-app reporting function (refer to Annex C).

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

1. ADD – ScamShield App and security features (e.g. enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Multifactor Authentication for banks and set up transaction limits for internet banking transactions, including PayNow). Add a Money Lock feature to further secure savings in bank accounts from scams.  
   
   
2. CHECK – the authenticity of the information with the official website or sources, even if you are expecting the delivery of a parcel and do not click on links provided in unsolicited messages or emails.
   
   
3. TELL – Authorities, family, and friends about scams. Report any fraudulent transactions to your bank immediately and report the messages to through the in-app reporting functions.

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 safeguard our community.

Annex A - 1

Images of multiple variants of phishing messages

Annex A – 2

Annex A – 3

Annex A – 4

Annex B

Annex C

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

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