TACLOBAN CITY — Almost seven out of every 10 mobile phone and internet users in Eastern Visayas have fallen victim to some form of cyber incident, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported Tuesday.

The PSA’s National Information and Communications Technology Household Survey (NICTHS) found that an estimated 66.9 percent of individual ICT users in the region, aged 10 and above, have experienced text scams, hacking, phishing and cyberbullying.

That’s a significant increase from 2019, when the incident rate was 32.9 percent.

The survey, a joint effort with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, was conducted from December 2023 to February 2024 and covered 44,415 households in the region.

Of those who have been victimized, only 2 percent reported the incident to authorities.

According to PSA regional director Wilma Perante, Eastern Visayas has 1.2 million households, or 3.86 million individuals 10 years and older with access to digital technology, adding that 97.9 percent of them use social media for long-distance communication with friends and relatives.