‘Trojan’ phone attacks may cause Pinoys to lose P86B

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines may deal with up to $1.5 billion (P86 billion) in financial losses this year due to cyberattacks targeting smartphones, the preferred device of Filipinos when making digital payments and other transactions, according to mobile security company Appdome.

Tom Tovar, Appdome co-creator and CEO, told the Inquirer that mobile “Trojan” attacks have been on the rise worldwide, with many falling victim to these digital threats.

He explained that a Trojan attack looks like a “seemingly legitimate application on your phone” like an expense tracker and photo and video editor.

“But inside that application there is another code, malware that is being used either to monitor your behavior, harvest your personal information, or worse, perform account takeovers,” he said.

“They (hackers) take your username and password and send them away to a server and somebody sells your username and password on the dark web,” Tovar added.

After illegally obtaining sensitive information like e-wallet details, a hacker can eventually take over the account and siphon out money.

“All those little losses of every single individual Filipino who might lose something add up to a potentially big number,” Tovar said.

Mobile-first economy

Hackers target Filipinos because the Philippines is a mobile-first economy and has a high adoption of e-wallets.

According to Appdome’s Mobile Consumer Survey 2024, 54.7 percent of Filipino consumers use mobile applications more than the web and 74.2 percent of the users have increased app usage over the last 12 months.

The majority or 61.6 percent of the surveyed Filipinos said they use e-wallet, mostly for payments.

About 68 percent of Filipino users flagged concerns over hacking while 42.4 percent were worried over mobile fraud. Apart from Trojan attacks, mobile users have been dealing with the proliferation of text scams as well, which trick Filipinos into giving out their personal information.

Given the surge in fraudulent activities, 97.5 percent of the surveyed Filipinos said they want total mobile protection to fend off hackers.

(2025/04/01-02:18)