Reports of scam text messages and phone calls in the Philippines fell sharply in 2025, according to data presented by the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) and global caller ID app Whoscall. The agencies say the drop shows that blocking efforts and public awareness are working, but they also warn that scammers are changing tactics.
Why It Matters: The large drop in SMS and call scams shows that current measures are helping, but the rise of phishing links means the risk has not gone away. For everyday users, this means being careful is still necessary, especially when clicking links, even if scam texts and calls are becoming less common.
Instead of relying mainly on mass text messages and random calls, many fraudsters are now shifting to phishing links and other online traps that are harder to detect and easier to spread through social media and messaging apps.
Based on the Whoscall 2025 Philippines Scam Report, around 822,634 scam SMS messages were recorded in 2025. This is a big drop from more than 6.1 million in 2024, or a decrease of about 86.6 percent year on year.
Scam calls also went down. In 2025, about 477,302 scam calls were reported, compared to 610,688 in 2024. This is a decline of nearly 22 percent.
Quarterly data also show that scam calls continued to decrease toward the end of the year, falling from around 62,000 in the third quarter to about 28,000 in the fourth quarter. However, scam SMS slightly increased in the last quarter, rising from around 37,000 in the third quarter to more than 71,000 in the fourth quarter.
At the same time, reports involving phishing and other risky links increased. The number of these links went up from about 13,600 in the first quarter of 2025 to more than 49,000 in the fourth quarter. Many of these links were linked to fake loan offers, reward scams, and similar schemes.
Community reporting platforms also received hundreds of reports in the second half of 2025, including cases involving scam messages, social media scams, and malicious links. This shows that while traditional scam methods are declining, online-based fraud remains active.
CICC continues to encourage the public to report scam incidents through its official channels so authorities can track trends and respond faster to new methods being used by scammers.
With scam texts and calls going down but phishing links going up, are Filipinos really safer now, or just facing a different kind of online risk?
