Posted by SINGAPORE, 28 April 2026 — Carousell, the leading multi-category classifieds marketplace across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, today published its Regional Scam Trends Report 2025, highlighting evolving scam tactics observed on the platform and the proactive measures taken to safeguard its community.
Balancing a 99.9% scam-free rate despite evolving phishing tactics
New to this edition is the scam-free rate which measures the percentage of platform transactions completed without a scam incident. 99.96% transactions across all markets were scam-free, with Singapore observing a 99.97% rate.
| Singapore | Hong Kong | Malaysia | Philippines | Taiwan |
| 99.97% | 99.95% | 99.95% | 99.93% | 99.99% |
Table: Key markets covered in this report
Complementing this, over 93% active users across all Carousell markets did not encounter a scammer, with Singapore performing even stronger at 97%. These outcomes are achieved with the collective efforts of platform security, community vigilance, and user education.
Regionally as a whole, Carousell suspended more than 451,000 suspicious accounts and reviewed over 520,000 community reports to swiftly stop scammers from taking further action. Within Singapore, more than 52,000 suspicious accounts were suspended and over 78,000 community reports were reviewed.
With phishing scams being a common scam type, Carousell had been proactively blocking external links, email addresses and QR codes from being sent in chat. Similar to regional trends, Carousell observed a decline in the volume of links and email addresses blocked in Singapore, while the amount of QR codes increased.
“The increase in QR code interceptions is likely due to two factors: a) scammers switching tactics to QR codes because they’ve learnt that they cannot send links and emails, and b) enhancement of our detection capabilities to identify and block such attempts. Particularly for Singapore, we have also observed scammers guessing email addresses from usernames to send phishing emails,” said Mr Gijs Verheijke, Director of Trust and Customer Experience at Carousell.
Scammers get more creative in 2025
The guessing of victim’s email addresses to send fake emails pretending to be buyers is an evolution from the email phishing scam, where scammers would ask victims directly for their contact details. This is one example of how scammers have been creatively adapting their methods once users become wiser to existing scam variants.
The report highlights the following top emerging scam variants observed in 2025:
*Ranked according to top scams in Singapore
- Deposit & pre-order (E-commerce): Scammers advertise high-demand or limited-availability items, and require buyers to pay a deposit or full payment upfront to “secure” the item. This is especially common in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
- Digital goods & gaming: Scammers often target buyers of digital assets where transactions are difficult to reverse. This is common in Singapore and Hong Kong.
- Off-platform (Phishing): Scammers in Hong Kong and Malaysia continue to move conversations off-platform to trick users to transact. Scammers in Singapore even guess email addresses from usernames to initiate phishing attempts.
- Misrepresentation & non-delivery (E-commerce): Scammers offer attractive deals on fashion or lifestyle products, but either deliver defective items or disappear after receiving payment. This commonly happens in the Philippines and Malaysia.
- ‘Abono’ advance pay: Scammers in the Philippines trick sellers into refunding a “commission” from an overpaid advanced payment, only for sellers to realise the delivery address is fake and they must refund the rider’s full advance.
- Refund: Scammers in Taiwan deliver defective items and stall refund requests with repeated excuses until they stop responding.
Enhanced measures to strengthen safety and trust
As scammers continually change their tactics, so must platforms. Carousell continually enhances its multi-layered safeguards, such as regularly refining its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science tools to detect scams and suspicious activity at scale.
New measures introduced in recent months, include:
- Additional account reverification in 2025: When the platform suspects a suspicious login attempt, Carousell will issue an SMS for users to verify that they are genuinely accessing their account. Singapore users may also be required to verify with Singpass for situations with high similarity to scam patterns.
- Mandatory Singpass verification for professional sellers in 2025: All users with Professional accounts are required to verify their accounts. Buyers can identify these accounts with the ‘Professional seller’ badge.
- Carousell Certified Luxury Watches in 2026: A curated network of trusted merchants is selected via a rigorous vetting process. Buyers can shop confidently from these verified sellers, with the option to inspect watches in person before making a purchase.
Platform safeguards work best when users stay vigilant too. Scammers succeed when they can exploit the gap between what a platform can detect and what a user does next; for instance continuing to share phone numbers despite a warning or completing a deal off-platform with an unknown link.
Quick tips for safer buying and selling
As a general reminder when buying and selling on any platform online:
- Keep conversations within the platform instead of moving to messaging apps
- Be cautious of unsolicited links, emails or payment requests
- Avoid sharing personal or financial information with unknown users
- Use secure platform payment features where available
- Watch out for deals that seem too good to be true
Visit support.carousell.com to learn more safety tips and advisories.
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About Carousell
Carousell is part of Carousell Group, the leading multi-category platform for secondhand in Greater Southeast Asia on a mission to make secondhand the first choice. Founded in August 2012 in Singapore, the Group has a leading presence in seven markets under the brands Carousell, Carousell Media Group, Cho Tot, Laku6, LuxLexicon, Mudah.my, OneShift, REFASH and Revo Financial, serving tens of millions of monthly active users. Carousell is backed by leading investors including Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Naver, STIC Investments, 500 Global and Peak XV Partners (formerly known as Sequoia Capital India). In Singapore, Carousell has a diverse range of products across a variety of categories, including cars, lifestyle, gadgets and fashion accessories. Download the app for iOS or Android, and visit http://www.carousell.com for more information.