More than 500 websites impersonating Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and seven Home Team agencies have been taken down.
HTX, the Home Team Science and Technology Agency, detected the websites on 10 August 2026. Every site identified had been removed by the following day, MHA said in an advisory on 12 August.
The affected agencies included the Singapore Police Force (SPF), Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), Singapore Prison Service (SPS), HTX and Home Team Academy (HTA).
Fake Websites Copied Official Branding and Content
According to MHA, the websites reproduced official branding and publicly available material from the ministry and the affected agencies.
This could have led visitors to mistake the lookalike pages for legitimate government websites.
However, investigations have found no evidence so far that the sites were used to carry out scams or collect information through phishing.
There is also no evidence that MHA or Home Team computer systems were compromised or accessed without permission. In other words, the websites’ operators apparently copied publicly visible material rather than obtaining it through a system breach.
How to Identify a Real Government Website
MHA advised members of the public to check the full website address before entering personal or sensitive information. Official Singapore Government websites end in .gov.sg.
People should also watch for warning signs such as:
- Unusual website addresses
- Spelling or grammatical mistakes
- Blurry or poor-quality images
- Broken links
- Pages or functions that do not work properly
Where possible, users should reach government services through an agency’s official website or the gov.sg portal. Typing a known address directly into the browser is also safer than following links in unsolicited messages, emails, advertisements or social media posts.
Anyone who encounters a suspicious website claiming to represent MHA or a Home Team agency can contact the ScamShield Helpline at 1799 or submit a report through the police’s I-Witness portal.
Government Official Impersonation Scams More Than Doubled in 2025
The discovery comes amid a sharp increase in scams involving people pretending to be government officials.
According to police figures reported by The Straits Times, the number of government official impersonation scam cases rose from 1,504 in 2024 to 3,363 in 2025, more than doubling within a year.
MHA said it would continue monitoring for websites impersonating the ministry and its agencies and work with relevant partners to take action against them.
