Written Reply to Parliamentary Question on Wrong Recipient Names Sent Out on First Operational Day of ‘gov.sg’ SMSes

Question:

Ms He Ting Ru: To ask the Minister for Home Affairs with regard to wrong recipient names being sent out on the first operational day of the single sender “gov.sg” SMSes (a) how many messages have been sent with the wrong recipient names; (b) what has been the specific administrative error that led to this; and (c) what steps have been or will be taken to prevent their recurrence.

Answer:

Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law:

1. On 1 July 2024, the Police sent a legitimate scam advisory to alert members of the public to the re-emergence of a fake bulk order scam. This was sent via the “gov.sg” SMS Sender ID. The advisory was sent to more than 7,000 members of the public with the wrong recipient names.

2. This resulted from an officer making an administrative error when sorting the list of names and contact details of the SMS recipients. Upon realising the error, the Police immediately sent a follow-up SMS to the affected recipients and apologised. The recipients’ personal data was not compromised.

3. As members will understand, while officers are trained, human errors will happen sometimes. Our task is to ensure that it is not a systemic issue.