SINGAPORE – Over 30 million voice calls and 20 million short message services (SMS) suspected as scam calls and messages were blocked from reaching Singtel’s customers each month during the financial year (FY) ended March 31, the telco said in its sustainability report released June 30.
That’s 360 million voice calls and 240 million SMSes for the year.
Scam calls and SMSes have increased significantly as scam actors have become more sophisticated, said a Singtel spokesperson, and the telco has stepped up its scam mitigation measures in response.
It added that the average monthly figure for potential scam calls and SMSes blocked a year ago was around 10 million respectively.
According to Singtel, its customers were protected via advanced voice and SMS firewalls with capabilities such as pattern recognition, volumetric analysis and machine learning.
Official figures provided by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) showed over 260 million potential scam calls and 40 million potential scam SMSes were blocked in 2025.
In 2024, there were 117 million potential scam calls and 50 million SMS messages blocked, IMDA said.
According to IMDA, the authorities partnered with telcos and the police to disrupt scams across various communication channels.
In addition to blocking potential scam calls and messages, it has also disrupted around 100,000 mobile lines suspected of misuse since mid-2024.
During the FY, Singtel said it collaborated with IMDA and other organisations to raise digital literacy and scam awareness among seniors and members of the public.
It noted that seniors who are usually less digitally savvy were more confident using their mobile devices and also more aware of online dangers such as scams, not clicking on suspicious hyperlinks or making bank withdrawals at the request of strangers.
Engagement and education programmes tailored for migrant workers and domestic helpers were held during the FY, given their increased exposure to job and loan scams.
Singtel also extended cybersecurity training programmes to local firms, and conducted AI literacy workshops for primary school students during the FY.
The telco’s IT engineering subsidiary NCS developed an AI-powered phishing detection solution with the National University of Singapore. Using deep learning and multi-layered content analysis, it can assess whether a website genuinely belongs to the organisation it claims to represent.
Singtel said the tool increases the precision and efficiency of identifying malicious websites, processing around 100,000 suspicious URLs every day and reducing human effort by 85 per cent.
It added that the emergence of frontier AI models is greatly accelerating the speed and scale at which vulnerabilities can be discovered and exploited. “This changes the pace and complexity at which organisations must detect and respond to such cyber threats.”
