Received another scam call from MOH. Sharing my experiences to prevent people from falling into scams. which I think alot of people (and not just the elderly) would be susceptible to.

The scary thing is… There was no +65 for this call. (Yes, I hang up on +65s now.).

My premise is that I’ve been doing daily calls with my hospital for reporting related to my personal health condition.

The scammer who called spoke in Chinese (red flag 1), informing that he’s calling from MOH and that they received one of my emergency documents.

Then they tried confirming my identity. Firstly with my name. (They got the name but not the surname right. (red flag 2) This could be public information since as humans, we share our data every day.) And then confirming my phone number (which obviously they have on hand given that they were the ones who called the number).

This creates a sense of legitimacy that they are calling from a governmental organization. (Please note that when organisations try to confirm your identity, more than just publicly available information is used for confirmation.)

This scam feeds on human desires to know what emergency document of mine was sent to the ministry as they fish for information or more.

I wasn’t ready to share or confirm more information so I hung up.

The number calling in is 94******. (There was no +65 on the caller id.)

Is this a scam or did I hang up on a legitimate call?

Netizens’ comments

If the caller cannot speak English it’s confirm scam bro. MOH or a hospital would never hire someone who can’t speak English to work in a call centre

Staff from Govt organisation or companies don’t call from their personal mobile phones about official matters. You might want to highlight this issue to your health service provider since there might be a breach of security on their end or staff may have sold your personal data. But most likely someone hacked into your email account and got the details from there or from your text messages. You are probably the softer target and your phone security might have been compromised, especially if you are an Android user.

MOH knows more about me than myself. No need to call and confirm