Scam texts and calls in the Philippines grew by 200% in 2024: report

Scam texts and calls in the Philippines grew by 200% during the first eight months of 2024, a report from a Taiwanese mobile app showed.

According to the report, from Jan. 1 to Aug. 15, Whoscall's community reporting program registered over three million scam texts and 320,000 scam calls. Millions of spam texts and calls were also logged.

Gogolook, the app’s developer, identified the most common types of scams encountered by users. The top five included phishing scams, accounting for 25 percent of all reported cases.

Following closely behind were fake gift card and promotion scams at 18%, and scams encouraging users to download apps from unauthorized sources (17%). Job, loan, and investment scams made up 15% of the reported cases, while scams related to the purchase of tech gadgets accounted for the remaining 14%.

In a Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum, Mel Migrino, Gogolook's country representative for the Philippines, said the scammers know how to profile their targets.

"Meron na silang idea, like, you are a probable target for an investment scam, you are a probable target for a loan scam,” Migrino said.

Whoscall is raising public awareness against scams through the app, which it said can distinguish between scam numbers and legitimate ones.

The app can also detect malicious links in text messages and help determine whether a user was involved in a data leak.

“Habang nagri-ring ang phone mo, sasabihin niya sa’yo, ah, ito bank ito," Migrino said. "Ito outright sinabi niya sa 'yo, scammer 'yan."

Migrino added that the feature works even without an internet connection, as long as the user's number can be called.

Whoscall's report came nearly two years after the SIM Card Registration Act was signed into law last October 2022.

The law reportedly aims to curb disinformation, anonymous online defamation, trolling, and libel, among others, and prevent terrorism, text scams, and bank fraud.