Arms race against the no-face: How the Protect Your Money campaign could equip the masses against financial trickery

By Matthew Miguel L. Castillo, Researcher

OPEN your mobile phone to check your SMS inbox, scroll to some messages sent through your trusted e-wallet or digital bank’s line.

Among these, find any message telling you of claimable winnings, redeemable points, and retractable transactions.

Look for a link included in the message, do not open it — inspect its content for any sly mistypes to resemble the website it is trying to emulate.

If no suspicion initially arose, you would probably open the link under normal circumstances, clueless that a scam attempt has already targeted you.

For a lot of Filipinos, this theoretical scenario had already been a grim and costly real-life experience, which sees more victims by the day.

Considering the widespread susceptibility to these emerging financial threats, the Financial Sector Forum (FSF) and the Consumer Protection and Education Committee (CPEC) decided it was high time to relaunch the Protect Your Money (PYM) campaign.

The PYM campaign is an awareness drive first launched in 2013 calling for Filipinos to be vigilant and proactive against financial schemes through offers in fraudulent investment activities and documents.

In an e-mailed response to BusinessWorld, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that the 2013 drive reminded the Filipino to protect his/her money by “knowing the bank, verifying it’s BSP license, and dealing with authorized employees or licensed agents only.”

The Financial Sector Forum renewed the campaign in June 2025 and adapted its information drives to more current financial threats.

“Today, deception wears a friendlier face, speaks your language online, and can reach your phone 24/7; this is why the PYM campaign needed to evolve,” the central bank said.

BEHIND ENEMY LINES
Police Colonel Jay D. Guillermo, chief of the Philippine National Police anti-cybercrime group of the cyber response unit, said that a person’s information is the primarily coveted among cyber criminals.

“It is a person’s information that [the scammers] attain first to eventually run trickery on them and get their money,” he told BusinessWorld in a Zoom interview.

Mr. Guillermo said that the public’s personal information is widely available and easily accessible online, making it seamless for cyber fraud assailants to collect.

According to data from the Philippines Digital 2025 report by social media consumer intelligence company Meltwater, 90.8 million Filipinos, or 78% of the country’s overall population, have been using social media in 2025.

The report also showed that Facebook and Messenger were the most popular social media applications among Filipinos, in line with the most popular usage purpose of keeping in touch with friends and family.

Mr. Guillermo said that scammers exploit Filipino’s personal connections to run emergency scams on friends and family members of personal accounts they take over.

“Through Facebook, given that the user unknowingly provides the scammer with the one-time-passcode to his/her account, the latter may send messages to the former’s friends, asking for immediate financial aid after an alleged emergency,” he said.

He added that the scammer would then manipulate the victim into sending money to a dummy account of the supposed “helper” of their friend in the made up emergency scenario.

Mr. Guillermo said that scammers also purchase verified and/or authentic accounts or identities of actual persons to generate fake identities that the public would be unlikely to hesitate in trusting.

An example he mentioned was of registered SIMs, whose contact activities would not be flagged by monitoring agencies resulting in minimal barriers to reaching the common mobile user.

SITTING DUCKS
“The profile of a typical fraud victim is [anyone] that lacks basic digital education and digital literacy,” Julian Louie Singson, executive director and co-founder at the Cybersecurity Council of the Philippines (CSCP), told BusinessWorld in a Zoom call.

In multiple global reports and assessments, the Philippines has emerged as one of the most targeted and victimized countries in the cyberspace.

For instance, the 2025 Microsoft Digital Defense Report revealed that the Philippines placed 20th among countries targeted by cyberthreats globally in the first half of the year.

Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Philippines Peter Maquera said in an article that such attacks are “no longer isolated information technology (IT) issues — they disrupt operations, delay customer service and cause financial and reputational damage that can take years to recover from.”

The 2025 second-half update to the top fraud trends report by US-based consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion showed that the country was the most widely targeted by fraud among Asian countries assessed.

Almost two-thirds of all Filipino consumers surveyed were targeted by fraud, of which 9% eventually fell victim, from February to May 2025.

“Nowadays, people would receive text messages directly from reputable digital banks and e-wallets, containing links to fraudulent websites,” Mr. Singson said, adding that these could be identified with thorough and informed inspection.

Phishing was the most prevalent form of fraud in the Philippines in the span, according to TransUnion report.

It involves an online scammer’s impersonation of reputable institutions through varying contact points to lure targets into providing sensitive information allowing them access to their financial accounts.

Among Filipino business leaders alone, 6% of total revenues were lost to fraud in the past year, amounting to an estimate of P4 trillion.

Mr. Singson added that awareness would be vital for Filipinos to identify and easily steer clear of scams in their current forms.

In its move to refresh the campaign, the FSF recognized that active fraud syndicates are global scaling, tech-enabled, and more evasive, rendering the initial PYM safeguards “no longer enough.”

THE ARMAMENT AND ITS LOGISTICS
The PYM campaign has been rolled out through the multi-pronged efforts of the FSF by each member institution according to its given role.

The BSP leads in spreading the campaign’s visibility with strategically placed posters, art-cards, and infographics in high traffic places both online and offline, primarily targeting underserved communities.

The Securities and Exchanges Commission mainly boosts the campaign’s digital engagement with postings of educational short videos or reels that make financial concepts digestible and emphasize protecting money against scams.

The Insurance Commission directly reaches out to Filipinos with SMS tips to remind them of consumer safety and to verify who or what they are dealing with financially.

And lastly, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. amplifies the campaign through radio interviews, reminding offline Filipinos to proactively safeguard their deposits.

“FSF CPEC believes that when financial regulators speak with one voice, the message cuts through the noise,” said the central bank.

According to data provided by the BSP, 50,000 campaign posters have been printed and distributed nationwide from August.

The first batch of educational reels had already been posted, accumulating 178,000 views as of early December, with more content being prepared for release in later dates.

Radio segments and text message advisories have also been prepared for rollout to reach Filipinos without access to social media platforms.

The renewed campaign is set to strategically roll out in phases up to 2028, with the goal of behavioral changes in Filipinos and improved sensitivity to encroaching threats.

“Scams evolve, so must our shields. Protect Your Money started as a warning. Today, it is a call to empowerment,” the BSP said.

TACTICAL ADVICE
Mr. Guillermo said that the most effective way the campaign could spread awareness on cyber threats and cybersecurity would be in a more direct and personal approach.

“In posting awareness campaign advertisements online or in banks, what are the chances passersby and customers will read these? The best step to expand awareness is to talk to the people,” he said.

Moreover, Mr. Guillermo said that the most vulnerable to scams are those in far-flung areas and are newly connected to online financial platforms, saying that they may not be reached through the campaign’s current methodology.

Mr. Singson added that coordinating with and mobilizing various communities that make up the masses would be a strategic move in the campaign’s execution.

He added that partnerships with various clubs and local governments would greatly help in connecting with the people and improving their overall digital literacy.

“A successful [educational effort] I have seen is that of a small bank which went to Zumba classes of senior citizens — providing their drinks and snacks — and eventually teaching them financial literacy,” he said.

The experts said that artificial intelligence (AI) and deep fake technology loom as formidable tools that fraudsters use to empower their trickery.

“I have personally seen investment traps on Facebook using AI generated videos of [Filipino billionaires], claiming quick returns on supposed investments,” he said.

“Deepfake [technology] is what’s new on the horizon, to run cryptocurrecy, investment, and recovery scams,” Mr. Guillermo added.

A deepfake, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is an image, recording, or video altered and edited to have an entirely different person deliver the message or action being shown.

“For example, [the scammers] can capture my [persona] and post it, using my identity to run a recovery scam,” said Mr. Guillermo.

A recovery scam is aimed at those previously victimized by financial loss or other forms of fraud, using the disguise of an assistant in recovering the money to bait for even more information.

REINFORCEMENTS EN ROUTE
FSF CPEC said that the campaign is open to cooperating with schools, local governments, media organizations, and digital platform advocates in empowering its information drive.

Mr. Singson said that the CSCP is open to supporting this push for grassroots learning which “they have already been doing.”

“The way we do it is we deliver short cyber hygiene lessons [in] schools… we can partner up with both the national and local government to push for more digital literacy for everyone,” he said.

Moreover, Mr. Singson said that the CSCP could provide the FSF CPEC with developing cyber threats in the Philippines and ASEAN countries to spread awareness in advance.

Meanwhile, Mr. Guillermo said that the PNP anti-cybercrime group could aid in highlighting dangers in cyberspace by giving threatened institutions a heads-up based on recurring complaints.

“We [can track], based on the complaints, the lapses in financial institutions procedures and collection of information, and talk to them about it,” said Mr. Guillermo.

The BSP said that rolling out the “collaborative model” of the PYM campaign will continue to expand moving forward, ensuring that protection and empowerment are promoted together.