Scams cost Filipino consumers an estimated US$1.9 billion (121.8 billion pesos) over the past year as exposure to fraudulent schemes continued to rise, with more than eight in 10 adults encountering scammers, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA).
In its 2026 State of Scams report, GASA said 84% of the 1,160 Filipino adults surveyed had encountered a scam in the previous 12 months, up from 77% in 2025.
This translates to an average of 151 scam encounters per person annually.
Nearly half of Filipino adults, or 44%, interacted directly with a scammer over the past year.
Among those who engaged with fraudulent schemes, 34% suffered financial losses.
Average losses stood at 10,427 pesos per victim. The financial toll placed severe strain on household budgets, with 22% of victims saying they could no longer afford basic living expenses after being scammed.
In addition, 82% of respondents said being scammed had negatively affected their overall well-being.
“Scams pose a major threat to the Philippines’ economic stability and financial system integrity,” said Mel Migrino, Philippine country head and general manager of Gogolook, a software firm that collaborated with GASA on the report.
“As major scam hubs face enforcement crackdowns, syndicates have decentralised into smaller, pervasive operations across rural areas.”
Migrino added that investment scams, relationship fraud, task-based schemes, third-party scams and identity theft had proliferated over the past year, threatening both personal and enterprise security.
Shopping scams were the most common form of fraud, accounting for 24% of reported interactions, followed by investment and employment scams, at 22% each.
The survey found that 88% of scam attempts occurred on platforms with direct messaging features.
Facebook was the leading platform for scam encounters, cited by 58% of respondents, followed by Gmail, at 33%.
GASA noted that victims were largely left to identify fraudulent schemes on their own, as formal warnings from banks, telecommunications providers, anti-scam platforms and public authorities played only a limited role.
“Filipinos place substantial responsibility for scam prevention on online platforms and website providers, yet these organisations are perceived as underperforming relative to the responsibility assigned to them,” GASA said in the report.
Main photo: Workers sit at their desks during a raid by agents of the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission (PAOCC) and the National Bureau of Investigation at an office of a suspected online scam farm in Manila on January 31, 2025.//AFP
