Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has ordered Apple to block or filter messages on iMessage that impersonate government agencies. Apple will be required to put in place new anti-spoofing protection by December 1, according to a Straits Times report.
By Nov 30, Apple and Google must prevent accounts and group chats on iMessage and Google Messages from using names that spoof the “gov.sg” sender ID or other local government agencies, or they must filter out messages from such senders, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Nov 25.
The MHA said that it had issued an Implementation Directive to Apple under the Online Criminal Harms Act. Google must also put similar protections in place for its Messages app, and is also required to comply by November 30.
MHA said iMessage does not currently support the safeguards built into Singapore’s registered SMS sender ID system, thus the directive. Legitimate messages sent by Singapore government agencies through traditional SMS channels have used the “gov.sg” sender ID to help the public verify authenticity since July 2024.
However, messages sent through Apple’s iMessage do not pass through that ID registry, allowing scammers to pose as government agencies. The ministry says there have been more than 120 police reports about scammers impersonating registered sender IDs.
The directive requires Apple to put measures in place to 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. Messages or group chats that appear to spoof government identifiers must either be blocked or filtered so that recipients do not see them.
Apple will be forced to make changes to iMessage’s name-handling behavior in Singapore, to create an exception to the platform’s reliance on unverified user-defined sender names in messages and group messaging threads.
“Apple and Google have indicated that they will comply with the Implementation Directives,” said the ministry, which could fine the companies if they fail to implement the changes.