Singapore has ordered Apple to block or filter messages on iMessage that impersonate government agencies, requiring the company to implement new anti-spoofing protections by December as part of efforts to curb rising online scams, theStraits Times reports.


Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that it had issued an Implementation Directive to Apple under the Online Criminal Harms Act, instructing the company to prevent iMessage accounts and group chats from using names that mimic Singapore government agencies or the "gov.sg" sender ID. The directive also applies to Google Messages, with both companies required to comply by November 30.

MHA said the order was necessary because iMessage does not currently support the safeguards built into Singapore's registered SMS sender ID system. Since July 2024, legitimate messages sent by Singapore government agencies through traditional SMS channels have used the "gov.sg" sender ID to help the public verify authenticity.

Messages sent via iMessage, however, do not pass through the same ID registry and therefore allow scammers to present themselves using identical or near-identical identifiers. The ministry cited more than 120 police reports in which scammers impersonated registered sender IDs.

As part of the directive, Apple must now ensure that profile names of unknown iMessage senders are either not displayed or are shown less prominently than the phone numbers associated with the account. Authorities said this requirement is intended to give users a clearer view of the identity information least susceptible to manipulation. Messages or group chats that appear to spoof government identifiers must either be blocked entirely or filtered so that recipients do not see them.

Apple's compliance will require changes to iMessage's display logic and name-handling behavior in Singapore, creating an exception to the platform's long-standing reliance on unverified user-defined sender names in one-to-one and group messaging threads. iMessage does not currently use a sender ID registry or external name verification scheme, and the new rules mark one of the first instances of a government requiring compulsory filtering for specific categories of display names within Apple's messaging ecosystem.

The MHA said Apple and Google have indicated that they will comply with the directive. If they fail to implement the mandated controls, the companies could face penalties.

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Article Link:Singapore Orders Changes to iMessage by December

Starfia said:

I haven't used phone service in ages, so I don't know: does iMessage's recent feature for initially hiding messages from unknown contacts essentially take care of this anyway?

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It does, but it is possible that legitimate government messages could get caught by the spam filter. This request doesn't appear to be intended to address the spam issue - rather, it's about being able to reliably tell where a message was sent from.

ProbablyDylan said:

It does, but it is possible that legitimate government messages could get caught by the spam filter. This request doesn't appear to be intended to address the spam issue - rather, it's about being able to reliably tell where a message was sent from.

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Right, I think I perceived that but then started to rationalize about it. I think I had the idea that enabling "hide messages from unknown contacts" amounts to a conscious choice by a user that they intend to occasionally check those messages and inspect the sender's information, which seemingly already is a reliable way to tell where a message was sent from. So I suppose this is more about some proactive, specific, non-user mechanism to reduce the likelihood that users will slip up there.

(I have to say, this is leading me to curiosity about the practicality of this – I've never even heard of direct messages from governments to citizens. Is Singapore's government just chatty like that…?)

Starfia said:

I've never even heard of direct messages from governments to citizens

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Tax, fines, car registration, health reimbursement, health records, weather warnings, education logging, compulsory savings etc.

And I'm not in Singapore

Starfia said:

I haven't used phone service in ages, so I don't know: does iMessage's recent feature for initially hiding messages from unknown contacts essentially take care of this anyway?

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Eh what? 👀

You have your phone in constant Airplane mode/No Sim, and are living all day everyday in wifi range?

retroneo said:

Tax, fines, car registration, health reimbursement, health records, weather warnings, education logging, compulsory savings etc.

And I'm not in Singapore

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!

May I ask where you are?