Thailand has experienced a surge in scam calls and SMS messages, reaching 168 million in 2024, marking a five-year high, according to Gogolook Thailand's 2024 annual report.
The increase is attributed to the intricate scam ecosystem, fuelled by the adoption of advancements in generative AI technology via phone, SMS messages and malicious links.
These tactics encompass impersonation scams, diverse financial scams, and personal data breaches.
Gogolook Thailand is a leading trust-tech company and the provider of the Whoscall digital anti-scam application.
Manwoo Joo, chief executive of Gogolook Thailand, said that since the company launched its annual report in 2020, it has continued to closely monitor the evolving scam landscape across Whoscall's key markets.
Last year's 168 million scam calls and SMS messages mark a staggering 112% increase from the 79.2 million recorded in 2023. Scam calls surged to roughly 38 million in 2024, up from 20.8 million in 2023, while scam SMS message detections skyrocketed to nearly 130 million, more than doubling from 58.3 million in 2023.
Whoscall's Smart SMS Assistant feature was able to block and filter nearly 130 million SMS scams in 2024. This indicates that scammers still heavily rely on SMS as their primary scam channel.
Gambling and money loan scams are the two most common types of SMS scam. Scammers also shifted to impersonating delivery services and impersonating utility services that connect with the government's policy of reducing the price of electricity bills as well as other policies such as the digital wallet scheme.
Last year, Whoscall launched its "Web Checker" feature that allows users to check against unknown links while browsing on the internet.
The report also highlights the issue of personal information leakage. In Thailand, Whoscall's ID security feature discovered that 41% of users had their personal info exposed on the dark web and deep web.
A significant majority of the leaked data included email addresses (97%) and phone numbers (88%), potentially accompanied by birth dates, names, passwords, and other sensitive information.
