In Kuala Lumpur on September 9, the GSMA, a global mobile industry association, said two reports found that scams are weakening trust in digital services in Southeast Asia.

Its consumer survey across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam found that 8% of respondents had been scammed in the previous 12 months, and 45% of reported cases were unresolved.

Among scam victims, 68% lost money. Of those victims, 82% recovered none of their losses.

Messaging apps accounted for 41% of scam experiences, while 96% of consumers said they worried about being scammed or hacked.

The GSMA said a second report, Digital Nations 2026: Building Trusted Digital Ecosystems in ASEAN, found that AI-enabled phishing, deepfakes, voice cloning, and digital impersonation are making fraud harder to detect.

The group said the reports were launched at the Digital Trust Summit at M360 ASEAN.

It called for governments, mobile operators, digital platforms, and financial institutions to work together on identity verification, communications authentication, and fraud prevention.

At the regional level, a set of 10 principles for public-private cooperation on online scams was published.

However, the reviewed materials did not confirm a formal ASEAN-wide operational framework across telecom operators, banks, and platforms.

🔗 Source: GSMA