Philippine financial scams target 69% through SMS

Text messages remain the leading contact channel despite a decline from 75% in 2025.

Text and SMS messages remained the most common channels used by financial scammers to contact people in the Philippines in 2026.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents who encountered scams were approached through text or SMS messages, compared with 75% in 2025, according to the State of Scams Philippines 2026 report by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), Gogolook, and Mastercard.

Instant messaging applications, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram, ranked second at 39%, down from 50% a year earlier.

Social media posts on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube followed at 36%, compared with 50% in 2025.

Phone calls accounted for 33% of scam contact, up from 31% in 2025, whilst email declined to 29% from 38%.

Scam contact through gambling platforms fell to 21% from 23%, whilst digital advertisements dropped to 21% from 29%.

Online marketplaces, including Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook, accounted for 15%, compared with 17% in the previous year.

The report also found that 88% of scam attempts in the Philippines over the past 12 months occurred on platforms with direct messaging functions, up from 85% in 2025.

The findings were based on an online survey of 1,160 adults aged 18 and above in the Philippines, conducted between 16 March and 13 April 2026.

The sample was weighted to represent the country's adult population by age, gender, and region.