Filipinos have been victimized by a data breach at least once, making the Philippines among the most vulnerable countries in terms of cyberthreats, according to cybersecurity firm Surfshark, whose data shows that 124 million accounts in the country have been compromised since 2004, giving it the second highest count in Southeast Asia.
About 70 million passwords were leaked during the period of study, which posed risks for account takeover that might lead to identity theft and extortion, among others.
In Asia, the Philippines ranked fifth based on breach count since 2004. It stands at 17th globally.
“In Asia, 52 accounts are breached per 100 people on average. However, in the Philippines, this number goes up to 106 per 100 people,” Surfshark lead researcher Agneska Sablovskaja said.
Text scams, which are a form of phishing, have been on the rise since the pandemic. These spam messages usually contain fake lottery winnings and too good to be true job offers to lure unsuspecting victims into clicking suspicious links and providing personal information.
“When it comes to scamming people online, phishing remains to be the tried and tested modus operandi of cybercriminals due to its cost effectiveness and profitability,” said Adrian Hia, managing director for Asia-Pacific at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
The government has implemented SIM card registration in the country, in part to curb the proliferation of text scams. However, cyberhackers have remained persistent in coming up with new ways to trick victims due to financial motivation.
In a country where data breaches are commonplace, even in government institutions where taxpayers are supposed to pay for better cybersecurity, it is easy to believe the claims that the Philippines is among the most vulnerable in the world. After having been embarrassed a few times in recent weeks, government has been trying a bit harder to shore up its cyberdefenses, but for the private sector, Filipinos will have to do more to protect the critical data in their devices and homes from persistent and innovative cyberattacks that are not going away anytime soon. The only way to minimize this threat is if we make it harder for them to attack us, and the more our defenses are weak, the more we attract those crippling attacks that could make life very difficult for those who are successfully victimized.*
