One way hackers can deceive the public is through spoofing or, in short, identity fraud to gain the trust of users who may sometimes be unaware that they are being scammed when interacting with parties they think are friends or family.
In Singapore, the issue of spoofing is seen as quite critical, especially when it was recently reported that the Singapore government has ordered two technology giants, namely Apple and Google, to prevent the issue of identity fraud on the country's government agencies.
This directive was issued under the Online Criminal Harms Act after the Singapore police identified a fraud incident being carried out by criminals on the messaging platforms iMessage by Apple and Google Messages by Google.
This issue is seen to occur because although Singapore government agencies have registered SMS numbers with the identity "gov.sg" which is used to send messages to citizens, the messages sent will usually enter the iMessage or Google Messages application as the default messaging application.
The issue here is that users will not be able to distinguish between SMS messages from iMessage or Google Messages which are not SMS. This means that hackers can spoof the identity of the message sender and make the message sent appear to be from an official government agency.
A few months ago, a similar incident was also shown through the social media platform Facebook, where the Singapore government wanted to sue Meta Platforms for not implementing a facial recognition function to reduce the likelihood of government identity fraud.
Apple and Google have reportedly received a request from the Singapore government, and will update these messaging platforms to prevent identity fraud issues from occurring.
