Inquirer picture/Niño Jesus Orbeta
MANILA, Philippines — Cyberscammers could have shifted to social media and messaging apps, peppering Filipino customers with mortgage gives and playing hyperlinks, after operating right into a wall of rules in opposition to textual content fraud.
Malicious hyperlink addresses despatched through platforms reminiscent of Fb, Viber and Telegram soared to 18,735 within the second quarter this yr, up from 13,602 within the first quarter, in keeping with knowledge from Whoscall, a telephone fraud safety app.
Mortgage-related hyperlinks, for example, jumped to 9,930 within the April-June interval, up from 8,297 within the January-March interval.
READ: Most on-line scammers now are Filipinos who ‘realized’ from Pogos
Studies of grownup playing hyperlinks additionally elevated from 2,449 within the first quarter to 4,308 within the second quarter, as did promotion and incentive scams hyperlinks, from 2,856 to 4,497.
When clicked, “dangerous” internet addresses could make customers weak to knowledge breaches, threatening their private and monetary knowledge.
An official from Gogolook, developer of Whoscall, stated fraudulent hyperlinks had been diverted to social media and messaging apps after native regulators ramped up measures in opposition to conventional telephone and textual content frauds.
“The joint effort of the federal government and personal sectors minimized rip-off calls and SMS scams,” Mel Migriño, Gogolook nation head, stated in an announcement.
“Nonetheless, rip-off actors at the moment are shifting to different platforms, reminiscent of social media and messaging apps, to proceed their operations.”
On-line playing
The rise of on-line playing has alarmed the Catholic Church and a rising variety of lawmakers, who for the previous few weeks have stepped up requires a complete ban.
Catholic bishops argued that the social ills spawned by on-line playing had far outweighed the billions of pesos in revenues it generates. They’ve maintained this hardline place even after the federal government and enterprise sector vowed to impose stricter rules—reminiscent of limits on promoting—to curb public entry to its varied platforms.
E-wallets like GCash and Maya, and 24/7 playing platforms have solely made issues simpler for Filipinos.
Textual content, calls
In distinction, textual content scams dropped sharply to 65,035 circumstances within the second quarter of 2025, from 1.28 million circumstances in the identical interval final yr.
Rip-off calls additionally plunged to 34,964 from 135,535 final yr, in keeping with Whoscall.
Assistant Secretary Renato Paraiso, deputy director of Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Middle, stated a stronger partnership between the federal government and personal sector, in addition to boosted public consciousness, “stay key priorities” going into the third quarter.
“The problem lies in cracking down on misleading content material embedded in apps the place Filipinos spend most of their display time,” he stated in an announcement.
97M customers in 2024
In response to the “Philippines Digital 2025” report, 97.5 million Filipinos used the web in 2024, spending about eight hours and 52 minutes a day, normally with their cellular gadgets.
In a separate report, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) stated practically half of Filipino households had web entry at house in 2024 following the pandemic-led surge in demand for connectivity.
Some 13.56 million of the 27.79 million whole households had house web entry final yr, up from 4.1 million out of 23.4 million whole households in 2019.
The Nationwide Capital Area and Central Luzon posted the best share of households with web entry at 68.7 p.c and 61.3 p.c, respectively.
Zamboanga Peninsula (21.2 p.c) and Bangsamoro Autonomous Area in Muslim Mindanao (27.7 p.c) reported the bottom percentages, a sign that whereas the general digital divide is shrinking, it’s nonetheless there.
Demand for digitization
The PSA stated a Filipino family spent a mean of P1,069.10 a month on web connection in 2024. This was about P211.49 cheaper than the 2019 common of P1,280.59.
“Improve in web utilization is clearly due to elevated demand for digitization. Many extra Filipinos are consuming content material, purchasing and performing monetary transactions on-line. This naturally will drive a rise in web utilization,” William Emmanuel Yu, an ICT knowledgeable at Ateneo de Manila College, stated in an interview.
The drop in house web spending, alternatively, might be attributed to the “normalization of web subscriptions at house” because of the postpandemic return to work and faculty coverage, Yu stated.
“The necessity for redundant connectivity at house might be an element right here. It can be attributed to normal drop in costs on a per unit bandwidth foundation. So this context should be seemed into as effectively,” he added.
The PSA stated house was the most typical main location of accessing the web at 73.1 p.c. This was adopted by “in one other individual’s house” at 36.9 p.c; and in business institutions at 30.2 p.c.
The bottom share the place customers related to the web was in public entry venues, at 11.5 p.c.
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As to the varieties of gadgets used, mobile telephones had been probably the most broadly used at 98.8 p.c. Others had been laptops (14.7 p.c), good televisions (11.3 p.c), desktop computer systems (10.0 p.c), tablets (4.2 p.c), and gaming consoles (2.5 p.c). /cb
