Indian-origin Singapore minister K Shanmugam has alerted the public to an Instagram scam account using his name. The verified account of the minister has the handle kshanmugam_ whereas the scam account set up by the Instagram impostor has the handle kshanmugam_private_page.
This incident of the fake Instagram account was exposed by the minister himself with a post on the social network two days ago. The fakery is somewhat similar to what Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong had revealed earlier this month on Facebook about deepfakes of him ‘endorsing’ products. Both the cases fall under the broad category of impersonation scam.
K Shanmugam, who has the portfolios of Home Affairs and Law in the Singapore Government, posted on Instagram: “Have been informed that there is a scam account on Instagram that is impersonating me to connect with followers.” He mentioned the Insta handle of the fake account and urged the public to ignore any requests from it.
The Singapore website Mothership has reported today that the fake account impersonating the minister’s account has been taken down.
On December 11, DPM Wong had posted on Facebook: “Some have alerted me to recent scam posts and messages. There are deepfakes of me endorsing commercial products, and also misinformation circulating on various networks that the government is looking to reinstate a circuit breaker.”
A “circuit breaker”, in the context of government action, is a measure taken to stop the spread of an infection, e.g. a limited-duration lockdown. As Singapore has been seeing a rise in new cases of COVID infections in recent weeks, any misinformation in this regard could easily dupe the public.
Wong added in his Facebook post: “These are all falsehoods. Let’s stay vigilant and discerning online!” The DPM’s post was highlighted by a big yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, which is a typical warning symbol for vehicular traffic.