Posted by MANILA, 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 the Philippines observing a 99.93% rate.
| Philippines | Hong Kong | Malaysia | Singapore | Taiwan |
| 99.93% | 99.95% | 99.95% | 99.97% | 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 the Philippines 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 the Philippines, more than 22,000 suspicious accounts were suspended and over 43,000 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 the Philippines, 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 learned that they cannot send links and emails, and b) enhancement of our detection capabilities to identify and block such attempts. Recently, we have also observed that phishing scammers often ask users to move conversations to chat apps instead to avoid our security measures,” said Gijs Verheijke, Director of Trust and Customer Experience at Carousell.
Scammers get more creative in 2025
E-commerce and phishing scams continue to be the main scam types, with scammers creatively adapting their tactics or switching regions once users become wiser to existing variants. In the Philippines, a notable evolution is the ‘Commission and Pa-Abono Rider’ scam, which builds on an earlier tactic where scammers posed as buyers arranging ‘Buy for Me’ or Cash-on-Delivery services, leaving delivery riders out of pocket when recipients refused to pay or disappeared. The scheme has since grown more sophisticated: scammers now instruct riders to pay more than the listed price, then tell sellers that the excess is a ‘commission’ to transfer them. Once the transfer is made, the scammer disappears, the delivery location is invalid, and the seller is left to refund the rider and loses the transferred amount. This scam remains a dominant and ongoing concern in the Philippines today.
The report highlights the following top emerging scam variants observed in 2025:
*Ranked according to top scams in the Philippines
- 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.
- ‘Commission and Pa-Abono Rider’ scam: Scammers in the Philippines trick sellers into refunding a “commission” from an overpaid advanced payment.
- 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 Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
- Off-platform (Phishing): Scammers in Hong Kong and Malaysia continue to move conversations off-platform to trick users to transact. In Malaysia, they trick users to share email addresses in obfuscated ways to send phishing links for “payment confirmation”. Meanwhile, scammers in Singapore even guess email addresses from usernames to initiate phishing attempts.
- Digital goods & gaming: Scammers often target buyers of digital assets where transactions are difficult to reverse. This is common in Hong Kong and Singapore.
- 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.
A new measure introduced in 2025 is the introduction of additional account reverification via SMS when the platform detects a suspicious login attempt. Previously only email OTP was required.
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
- Refuse requests to transfer funds as ‘commission’ to buyer
- 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 the Philippines, OLX joins Carousell to bring consumers a diverse range of products across a variety of categories, including autos, properties, lifestyle, electronics and fashion accessories. Download the app for iOS or Android, and visit http://www.carousell.ph/ for more information.