All organisations that communicate with the public in Singapore through the sending of SMSes, could be mandatorily required to register with government-backed registry in future. 

This is one of the proposals that is being consulted upon, with a view to combating the rise in scams through SMSes. 

Singapore's SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR), which started operating in March this year, was set up in response to the surge in scams using SMS. It is operated by a subsidiary of Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). Since its launch, over 120 public and private sector organisations have registered. 

The SSIR is currently a voluntary system, in other words, for organisations who choose to register and protect their Sender IDs. The public however may still be subject to spoofed SMS, using non-registered Sender IDs (for instance, from organisations that choose not to register, or IDs that do not belong to any organisation). With this in mind, IMDA is now proposing to make Sender ID registration a requirement for organisations that use Sender IDs.

IMDA is also working with mobile network operators in Singapore to explore the deployment of anti-scam SMS filtering solutions within their networks.  

The consultation closes on 9 September and can be found here.