The Singapore police ordered Meta to implement measures to combat fraud against advertising, accounts, profiles and corporate parties impersonating key government officials on its Facebook social network. This is to combat fraud, reported the Minister of Government. The company can be fined up to $1 million in Singapore (775,698) if it fails to comply with a warrant issued under fresh national law on harm caused by an online crime that entered into force in February 2024.
"We issue (order) Meta, as Facebook is the most popular platform utilized by fraudsters to impersonate others, and police have estimated that more decisive action is needed to reduce these frauds," said Minister of State for interior Affairs Goh Pei Ming in a speech delivered on Wednesday. Meta did not respond immediately to the request for comment.
In August, the Singapore Interior Ministry stated that more than a 3rd of all e-commerce fraud reported in 2024 took place on Facebook. It besides rated Facebook Marketplace as the weakest among six e-commerce platforms in terms of implemented anti-scam functions.
Police statistic published in August showed that the number of frauds involving impersonation of government officials nearly tripled, to 1762 cases in the first half of 2025, compared with 589 cases in the same period the year before. Over the same period, losses from specified fraud amounted to a full of $126,5 million in Singapore, an increase of 88% compared to $67.2 million in Singapore lost the year before.
Since 2024, the Ministry of the Interior has acknowledged that Facebook Marketplace has been requiring selected sellers in Singapore to "enhance user verification measures" and that safety notifications have been introduced in the product, as well as notifications protecting against fraud in the message function to inform users about the hazard of fraud in e-commerce.
These measures were introduced after prior criticism from the government, which accused the company of failing to implement safeguards to defend users from fraud. In February 2024, the then Minister of State for interior Affairs, Sun Xueling, stated that the company "consistently opposed" the ministry's recommendations on the implementation of measures, specified as verification of users on the basis of identity papers issued by the government or offering safe payment options to combat e-commerce fraud on the platform.
