Singapore Orders Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to Verify Advertisers' Identities Under New Anti-Scam Code

Singapore's fight against AI-fuelled scams is moving from chasing individual fraudsters to holding the platforms that carry their ads accountable. In its latest push under the Online Criminal Harms Act, the police are forcing Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to verify every advertiser's identity against government-issued records — a direct response to a scam surge in which the three platforms account for roughly 30 per cent of all cases reported in Singapore last year.

The new Code of Practice for Social Media Services, announced by the police on Aug 18, gives the platforms until Jan 31 2027 to comply. They must block advertisements from financial services firms not licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore or other local authorities, prevent ads suspected of being linked to scams — including those using masked URLs that hide their real destination — and quickly remove reported scam content. Failure to comply is a criminal offence under the Online Criminal Harms Act, carrying fines of up to S$1 million.

The move is the third in a line of platform-specific codes rolled out since June 2024, when similar codes for online communication services and e-commerce took effect. Those earlier measures appear to work: scam cases on online services fell around 37 per cent in 2025. But the police warn that scammers are adapting, exploiting newer features such as messaging apps, online advertising and video conferencing — technologies increasingly supercharged by generative AI that lets fraudsters manufacture convincing deepfakes, fake agent identities and synthetic scams at scale.

The new rules extend beyond the three social platforms. A fresh code for online messaging and conferencing services — covering WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Apple iMessage, FaceTime, Google Message and Google Meet — will require user consent before unknown contacts can add them to groups, and will prompt users about potential scam risk. Updated e-commerce rules similarly tighten login verification for Carousell, Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Business Pages. The breadth reflects an MCI survey in which 84 per cent of Singapore residents said they had encountered harmful content online, most of it linked to scam activity.

Why it matters for Singapore: As AI makes scam production cheaper and more convincing, platform-level identity verification becomes a critical defence that individual users cannot mount on their own. Singapore is effectively testing whether regulating the rails of digital advertising — rather than just the fraudsters — can curb AI-enabled crime, and setting a compliance deadline that global tech giants must meet on local soil. The coming months will show whether verified-advertising rules can keep pace with deepfake-driven deception, and whether the lighter-touch regulation the platforms have long preferred can hold up under S$1 million penalties.