MANILA — A total of 10,004 cybercrime complaints were recorded in 2024, marking a threefold increase compared to 3,317 complaints in 2023, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) reported on Friday.

The agency also announced P198 million in losses from the recorded cybercrime incidents.

But this does not necessarily translate to a rise in cybercrime prevalence, as CICC Executive Director Alexander K. Ramos described the increase as an indicator of "growing cybercrime awareness of the public and their willingness to report".

“In previous years, people were not aware that they were being scammed and many were not also aware of where to file their complaints,” he said. 

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“We also owe this to our partners who have been encouraging the public to report to our hotline or through other channels and platforms,” he continued.

CICC says consumer fraud tops the number of complaints with 3,534 cases or 35 percent of the total records, including non-delivery of goods or services at 86 percent and fake advertisement at 8 percent. 

Meanwhile, online fraud has 3,242 complaints or 32 percent of the records. The cases include 957 instances of financial fraud, 396 issues of both job and investment scams, and 72 love scam incidents.

Other complainants also appealed against unsolicited communication, illegal access, identity theft, sexual cybercrime, phishing and cyber libel.

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GCASH MOST USED BY CONSUMER, ONLINE FRAUD VICTIMS

CICC reports also showed that most victims of consumer fraud, online fraud, and phishing use GCash as their digital wallet. They had a total loss of P76.49 million.

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Victims also use other digital banks and financial platforms such as BPI with P28.47 million loss, GoTyme with P15.38 million loss, and Paymaya with P13.99 million loss.

In November 2024, a resolution seeking to conduct an investigation on unauthorized transactions and phishing scams targeting digital wallet users was filed by Senator Risa Hontiveros in Senate. This was after numerous GCash users reported having their money sent to multiple people with unknown numbers.