Early this week, Trend Micro released their Online shopping safety tips infographic and this got me thinking of how applicable this was to the Philippines?



After some research, I found my answer – while the percentage of the population that has access to the internet has been increasing, it remains a lackluster 6.5% as of 2009. That means less than 6 million Filipinos have internet access. Various reports from Yahoo! also indicate that on average, less than 5% of Filipinos go online every month to shop and instead majority goes online to use Social Networks or to search. To add more insult to injury, less than 5% of the entire population have credit cards – the typical payment method that is utilized for online shopping.



Maybe this model has changed since 2009/2010 due to the numerous groupon/coupon sites that have been cropping up? But we’ll see by next year how this improves.



Note: Material used in the infographic from various sources.

…that destroyed Manila’s Bay Walk, dinosaurs roamed the place.

Dirty camera lens, circa 2003.