GASA survey: most scam victims across Asia never report what happened

According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, a new study of 17,460 adults across 13 Asian markets has measured something most scam coverage skips: what people do after the scam attempt, not just whether it happens. The study is called State of Scams in Asia 2026, and it puts a number on the gap between confidence and action.

Seventy-one percent of participants had encountered a scam in the past year. Sixty-six percent said they were confident they could recognise one. But 62% of those who were exposed went on to interact with the scammer anyway, and 9% lost money or personal information as a result. Only 4% reported the scam to the authorities.

What the gap shows

Confidence and outcome are two different things, and this study is the first to put them side by side at this scale. Most people believe they can spot a scam. Most of them still engage when one arrives. That means recognition, on its own, is not stopping anyone. The moment that matters is not whether someone can describe a scam in the abstract; it is what they do in the seconds after a message lands.

The reporting figure is the other half of the picture. Nine percent lost money or data, but only 4% told anyone with the authority to act on it. That means most financial loss in this study never reaches a regulator, a bank fraud team, or a police unit. Every pattern those bodies build, every warning list, every blocked number, depends on reports reaching them. A loss that stays unreported does not just hurt the person it happened to. It keeps the next version of the same scam invisible to everyone else.

Why this counts as a finding

Surveys of scam exposure are common. What this one does differently is connect three separate measurements, confidence, engagement, and reporting, in the same population. That makes it possible to see where the chain breaks. It does not break at awareness. It breaks between contact and action, and again between loss and reporting.

For anyone reading this, the practical takeaway sits in that second gap. A report does not have to come with a story of a dramatic con. It can come from a message that was clearly a scam and got a reply anyway, or from a loss that felt too small or too embarrassing to mention. The study suggests that reporting rate, not recognition rate, is the number worth moving.