SINGAPORE: The particular Central Provident Finance (CPF) Board will send SMSes using only the sender ID “CPF Board” on matters regarding CPF, Workfare and Silver Support from Aug 1 .
It will also quit using sender IDs “SG-Workfare” and “SG-SSS”.
In an online press release service on Monday (Jul 18), the CPF Board added that it has also registered the newest sender ID with all the Singapore SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR) set up by Infocomm Media Advancement Authority (IMDA).
The registry, initially meant to combat TEXT MESSAGE spoofing, was turn off and replaced with a full-fledged system in March, after IMDA said a spate of SMS phishing scams warranted the “strong response”.
CPF Board said the enrollment of the new sender ID will avoid scammers from impersonating it.
“Registering with SSIR identifies and blocks spoofed messages in advance. Only SMSes through CPF Board will be delivered using the sender ID ‘CPF Board’. ”
“Members can be assured that every SMSes from sender ID ‘CPF Board’ are legitimate messages from us. ”
Those who have authorized their mobile figures will receive an SMS from Jul 20 regarding this change.
“We encourage members to keep this SMS on their mobile phones so that people can be assured that will any future SMSes received on this exact same sender ID will be legitimate, ” the CPF Board stated.
“Any SMSes purporting to be sent by CPF Board on any other Tv-sender ID should be disregarded and deleted. ”
Members of the public were also reminded to stay alert and identify scam signs:
- Check if links leading to Government web sites contain the domain inch. gov. sg”.
- Reject calls with all the prefix “+65”, as they are likely to be overseas calls.
- When in doubt, always verify the information directly with the Federal government agency or by means of official websites.