CYBERSECURITY | GSMA reports nearly half of scam cases unresolved in Southeast Asia
The report said 8 percent of consumers surveyed had been scammed in the previous 12 months.
Nearly half of reported scam cases in six Southeast Asian countries remain unresolved, raising concerns about consumer confidence in digital services, according to new reports from the GSM Association (GSMA).
The GSMA ASEAN Consumer Scam Report 2026 found that 45 percent of reported scam cases in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam remain unresolved despite consumers taking more measures to protect themselves.
The report said 8 percent of consumers surveyed had been scammed in the previous 12 months. Among those victims, 68 percent lost money, with 82 percent of those victims recovering none of their losses. Only 10 percent recovered all of their losses.
Consumers who experienced scams were more than twice as likely to switch accounts or service providers than those who had not been affected, the report said.
The report also found that 96 percent of consumers were concerned about being scammed or hacked, while nearly nine in 10 recognized at least one form of artificial intelligence being used in scams.
Messaging apps were the most common channel through which consumers encountered scams, accounting for 41 percent of scam experiences. Scam activity was also increasingly shifting toward investment, cryptocurrency, online shopping and job scams, in which consumers were persuaded to send money themselves.
The findings were released Wednesday during the Digital Trust Summit at M360 ASEAN in Kuala Lumpur, alongside a second GSMA report, Digital Nations 2026: Building Trusted Digital Ecosystems in ASEAN.
The second report said digital trust is becoming increasingly important as Southeast Asian countries expand their digital economies, artificial intelligence adoption, digital government programs and cross-border digital integration.
It said emerging technologies are also making digital deception more sophisticated through phishing attacks, deepfakes, voice cloning and digital impersonation.
Julian Gorman, GSMA head of Asia Pacific, said access to digital services alone was no longer enough to ensure participation in the digital economy.
“Access alone is no longer enough. As ASEAN’s digital economies become more sophisticated, people must have confidence that digital services are secure, reliable and accountable,” Gorman said.
The report identified four foundations of digital trust: identity, communications, resilient networks and collective intelligence.
Identity refers to the ability to verify people and organizations in digital environments, while communications covers confidence in the authenticity and integrity of digital interactions.
Resilient networks encompass infrastructure and cybersecurity capabilities that keep digital services available and secure. Collective intelligence involves creating, sharing and using trusted information to strengthen the security and resilience of digital systems.
The GSMA said strengthening these foundations would require coordination among governments, regulators, mobile operators, financial institutions, digital platforms and other participants in the digital ecosystem.
The reports were presented as ASEAN countries pursue greater digital integration and seek to strengthen confidence in digital services.
Full disclosure: All news articles published on the TechSabado website are written by human journalists, unless otherwise specified. Final text editing is also performed by human editors, with artificial intelligence (AI) used only to assist with additional grammar and style guide corrections..
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