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At least 20 reports of a new phishing scam involving unpaid Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) tolls were made in the past week, said the Singapore police on Oct. 18.
About S$22,000 was lost to the scams.
Unpaid bills or fines
Victims would receive text messages, purportedly from the Land Transport Authority (LTA), informing them of overdue bills or unpaid tolls.
The messages would urge them to click on the embedded links to complete payment and avoid further penalties.
Some messages would also appear to be sent from “ERP”.
Upon clicking the link, victims would be directed to a fraudulent LTA website and asked to key in their credit or debit card details or One-Time Passwords (OTPs).
“Victims would subsequently discover unauthorised transactions made to their credit or debit cards,” the police added.
Safeguarding SMS as communication channel
To further safeguard SMS as a communications channel, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) announced on Oct. 14 that organisations that use SMS sender IDs have to register with the Singapore SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR) by January 2023.
Telecom operators will also implement SMS anti-scam filtering solutions within their networks to automatically filter potential scam messages before they reach consumers, IMDA said.
Don’t click links in text messages
The police advised members of the public not to click on links in unsolicited text messages.
They should…