You will be able to install ScamShield and use it to check and report suspicious messages.
Every scam in this course so far has started the same way: something reached you. A call, an SMS, a WhatsApp message, an ad. Modules 1 to 6 taught you to spot those once they arrive. This module is about what happens around your money, so that even a mistake costs you less, and it starts one step earlier, by stopping some of the messages and calls before they get to you at all.
Think about the last week of calls and texts on your phone. If even one of them was a scam you had to stop and think about, that's one moment where you could have been tired, rushed or distracted. Fewer of those moments means fewer chances to get it wrong.
ScamShield is an app and website from the Singapore government for checking and reporting scams. It's free, and it does two separate jobs.
The app sits on your phone and filters. It compares incoming SMS against patterns and senders linked to scams, and moves suspected scam messages out of your main inbox into a separate folder, so they don't sit next to your bank's real alerts. It can also block calls from numbers that have been reported and linked to scams, so your phone never rings for them.
The website, at scamshield.gov.sg, is where you go to check something and read up. You can look at current scam alerts, see how the latest scams are working, and check a suspicious message or number. It's also the place to find the ScamShield Helpline number and the other official contacts this course keeps pointing you to.
Download the app only from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, by searching for it yourself. Never install it from a link in a message. After lesson 6.1, How a sideloaded app takes over your phone, you'll recognise why a fake "ScamShield" APK would be a clever trick.
Installing the app isn't enough on its own. On both iPhone and Android, the filtering and call blocking only work once you give ScamShield permission to do them, and the app walks you through this when you first open it.
On an iPhone, the SMS filter and call blocking are switched on in your phone's own settings, under Messages and under Phone. Apple keeps your messages private from the app: the filter only sees messages from senders who aren't in your contacts, and it can't read your conversations with people you know. On Android, you'll be asked to allow the app to screen calls and to work with your messages.
If you skipped these steps when you first installed it, open the app again and follow its setup instructions, or check its help pages on the ScamShield website. The steps change from time to time as phones update, so follow the current instructions rather than a screenshot someone forwarded you.
Once it's set up, check the filtered folder now and then. Occasionally a genuine message gets caught. That's a small price, and it's easy to spot.
The app and website both let you report a scam message or call. This is more useful than it sounds.
When you report a message, the number and content go into the system that powers the filtering and call blocking. Enough reports on a number, and it can be blocked for other ScamShield users too. Your thirty seconds of reporting can stop the same scammer reaching your neighbour, your parents or a stranger who would have believed it.
Here is an illustration. Arif, 27, gets an SMS saying a parcel is held at customs and he needs to pay S$2.50 through a link. He doesn't recognise the sender, and after lesson 2.2 he knows a link like that is a warning sign. Instead of just deleting it, he reports it through the ScamShield app. Two days later his mother mentions she got a similar text, but hers went straight into the filtered folder.
Reporting also adds to what authorities know about the scams going round, which feeds the alerts you can read on the website.
ScamShield reduces how many scams reach you. It doesn't stop all of them, and it isn't built to.
Scammers change numbers constantly. A brand-new number that nobody has reported yet won't be on any block list. Messages that arrive on WhatsApp, Telegram or social media apps aren't SMS, so the SMS filter doesn't see them. And a scam that starts with an ad you click, or a link a friend forwards, never passes through the filter at all.
So treat ScamShield as a net that catches a good share of the obvious ones, and keep the stop-and-check rule from lesson 1.3 for everything else. If something gets through and asks you to move money, share a code, install an app or keep a secret, you stop and check, whatever the filter did or didn't flag.
The app is set up in a few minutes, and the protection runs quietly from then on. In the activity you'll do it for real, and you'll probably find a message in your inbox that's worth reporting while you're there.
Install ScamShield on your phone, turn on its SMS filter and call blocking, and report one suspicious message you have received.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).