ScamShield Bot Soft Launch
The ScamShield Bot is available on WhatsApp
The ScamShield Bot is now open to the public!
The ScamShield Bot was developed by Open Government Products in collaboration with the Singapore Police Force and NCPC.
When you receive a suspicious call or message, send it to the ScamShield Bot. The Bot can help you:
- Check if it’s a scam
- Report the scam
Reports on the Bot are forwarded to the Singapore Police Force for review. As such, by reporting on the ScamShield Bot, you’ll be helping to protect the broader community in Singapore against the same scams.
The Bot was developed to increase ease of reporting scams and to help users identify scams. With scams increasingly migrating to 3rd party platforms like WhatsApp, the ScamShield Bot on WhatsApp makes it easy for users to simply forward scam messages received on WhatsApp, or from any other 3rd party platform, and report them to the SPF.
Besides the Bot’s core reporting and checking features, here are some of the additional features we’ve developed to improve the user experience:
- Crowdsourced Information: When checking whether something is a scam, for messages or calls that have previously been reported, the ScamShield Bot can tell users how many others have also reported a similar message or contact. This feature was developed after multiple rounds of user testing that validate the power of social proofing. In other words, if users can see how many others have reported or checked a similar message, this will help users gauge whether the message is likely to be a scam.
- Machine Learning Classifier: For certain checked messages, the ScamShield Bot will use a machine learning classifier to determine whether the message content has been used by scammers before or whether the message contains URL links that likely lead to a scam website.
- Forwarding Messages: For scam messages received on WhatsApp, the user can simply forward the suspicious message from another chat in WhatsApp directly to the ScamShield Bot, and the forwarded message can be immediately checked or reported to the SPF.
- Accepts Screenshots: Users can screenshot messages and send them to the ScamShield Bot. The Bot uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to convert the screenshot from a picture to a text. This provides users another way to send messages to the Bot beyond copying or forwarding methods.
- See my Stats: Users are able to see the impact that they made by reporting on the ScamShield Bot. By clicking on ‘See my stats’ or typing out ‘stats’ to the Bot, users can find out how many reports they’ve submitted, how many times their reports have helped others check if something is a scam, and how many numbers/contacts/links etc. have been confirmed a scam as a result of their reports.
- Getting Help: If the user is ever confused or lost, simply type out ‘help’ into the bot and a list of commands will be displayed to help the user navigate directly to different features.
While you can directly block and report scam messages or contacts on WhatsApp or Telegram using their in-App blocking function, we recommend you to first report the message or contact to the ScamShield Bot. By reporting to the ScamShield Bot, you help inform other Bot Users about the same scams, and protect ScamShield App users from encountering scam SMSes and calls from confirmed scam contacts.
Please join us in our fight against scams!
We’d love to hear your comments, questions, and suggestions at: ScamShield Bot Feedback