After what could be considered as one of the biggest breaches on a cyber-security database in Singapore, Singhealth issued a warning through a Facebook post last July 23 to the public yet again of another privacy-damaging scam circulating recently via phone calls targeting Singhealth patients. The fraudsters call up these people and ask for their personal and financial details.
In a post through Singhealth’s official Facebook account, the health care company explained that they would not contact their clients via phone calls as they only notify them either by SMS or mail only.
Following Major Breach, Singhealth Warns Public about Phone Scam
Singhealth had also advised those who have received fraudulent calls to report the incidence to the police anti scam hotline at 1800-722-6688.
Last Friday (July 20), the Ministry of Health (MoH) as well as the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) had released a joint statement on the major security breach which had affected the health group’s system and information database, where information of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s outpatient dispensed medications, on top of the personal particulars of some 1.5 million patients were stolen by hackers according to a report by the MCI.
The data stolen include information such as patients’ name, NRIC number, address, gender, race and date of birth as well as the outpatient dispensed medications of over 160,000 of these patients.
Later during the same day, Singhealth had released an announcement to refute the contents of a circulating SMS, which incongruously exposes patients’ information such as phone numbers, and financial details such as credit card information.
As of press time, the police are conducting focused investigations regarding the major cyber-attack which is considered to be one of the biggest security breaches in the country.