CYBERCRIME complaints increased 71.9% year on year in the first quarter to 3,251, driven by better information available on where to report incidents, according to the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC).
According to a CICC presentation at the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines-San Miguel Corp. Business Journalism Seminar, there were only 1,891 complaints in the first quarter of 2024.
“The CICC, in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), has organized roadshows… to spread our 1326 complaint platform,” CICC Agent Marco S. Reyes said.
“If everyone knows there is a central platform to complain, naturally the frequency of complaints will get higher,” he added.
He said that the increasing number of complaints cannot serve as an indicator for whether cybercrimes are increasing or not.
“We’re still studying that because we don’t have the whole data yet. We’re still trying to reach everyone in the Philippines,” he said.
“Once we have that data, then we are confident enough to disclose that the behavior of these perpetrators is proliferating or going down. But as of now, (the evaluation is) still in progress,” he added.
In the first quarter, he said that most of the complaints involve smishing, or cybercrime that involves deceptive text messages, and vishing, or cybercrime that involves phone calls.
Anti-scam application Whoscall reported that it detected 648,239 short message service (SMS) scams and 351,699 scam calls in the first quarter.
According to Whoscall, loan availment schemes were the most prevalent for SMS scams. It was followed by VIP rewards scams and collection-related scams.
Meanwhile, Mr. Reyes said that perpetrators are now shifting to online platforms.
“They are now trying to shift to, say, for example, Viber and WhatsApp. Because these platforms offer privacy and you cannot see the number,” he added.
To address this, he said that the CICC and DICT are currently trying to work with the platforms to better regulate scams.
Scam Watch Pilipinas co-founder Jocel de Guzman said the regulation of social media companies is on the table.
“The problem is we cannot regulate them because they do not have offices here,” he added.
Last year, the CICC received 10,004 cybercrime complaints. — Justine Irish D. Tabile
