TL;DR – Fighting scams: the new For.sg domain has been rolled out to allow Singapore residents to access online health services in a safer manner
Take note: Public healthcare institutions will start to use links containing the For.sg domain to combat scammers who target victims through phishing links.
The domain has been made available to all 33 public healthcare institutions since 6 July 2022, including all public hospitals in Singapore.
Authentication Function
Upon clicking on a link with the For.sg domain, users will be brought to a page to verify the authenticity of the page before going to the main page of interest.
This is highly similar, if not the same as the Go.gov.sg link, which the public can use to access public services.
The Pros and Cons of Tech
As Singapore’s population becomes a more digitally educated and savvy, more public services are being made available online. While we enjoy this convenience, we should rightfully expect that unscrupulous individuals are waiting to take advantage of this to harness technology in wrong manners.
There have been messages containing phishing links claiming to offer Covid-19 vaccinations or claiming to be officials from the Ministry of Health.
So remember — always to verify authenticity of links associated with online public services. If the authenticating page does not appear, then it’s best not to proceed further.
For emails especially, scammers can embed malicious hyperlinks on texts, pretending to be “For.sg” or “Go.gov.sg” domains.
ScamShield
Spotted a phishing message or site? Report it at https://www.scamshield.org.sg/. ScamShield is only available for iPhone users for now — it can intelligently detect scam messages and block them before it reaches you.
Hopefully it will be made available on Android’s Google Play Store so that more Singaporeans can be protected from scams!