Almost six million cyber crimes committed a year ago, ONS says

Last year’s official total was 6.3 million.

Headline estimates will include cybercrime offences for the first time in January 2017 once questions have been asked for a full year.

It says that there were 12.1 million crimes in England and Wales in the 12 months up to the end of March 2016.

With regard to computer misuse, 22 per cent of incidents involved loss of money or goods, all relating to computer viruses (442,000 incidents).

There is a vast difference between the number of reports made to Action Fraud (661,004 in 2015) and the millions revealed by the crime survey.

“In reality, the number of people who state they are a victim of crime has fallen by just over 10% but it is the proportion of these that we are now recording results in these figures released today”.

The survey authors said an annual rise of 8% of recorded offences across England and Wales “is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime”.

“The cybercrime and fraud statistics in the latest ONS crime survey are deeply concerning, but not surprising”, said KPMG’s head of cyber security in the UK Paul Taylor.

Infamous online scams, also known as “phishing”, where tricksters steal bank and credit card information from their victims, were the most common type of cybercrime reported, with 2.5 million incidents recorded by the ONS.

He said it was “encouraging” to see recorded crime fall and police recording methods “becoming more accurate”.

“Together, these offences are similar in magnitude to the existing headline figures covering all other Crime Survey offences”.

With the first concrete inclusion of cyber-crime and fraud stats, the Office of National Statistics has shown that cyber-crime is almost high as all other kinds combined.

It found that people are 20 times more likely to be a victim of fraud than robbery, and 10 times more likely to suffer fraud than theft, the survey suggests.

Jack Dromey MP, Labour’s shadow policing minister for three years, said: “Crime is not falling, crime is changing”.

“The industry is continually evolving its response to fraud as it develops, investing in new detection and verification tools”.

The new inclusion of cyber-related crimes comes as part of plans by the ONS “to improve the design, coverage and presentation of crime statistics in England and Wales over the next few years”.

They also said estimates showed “no significant change in levels of violence compared with the previous survey year”, although they said it was “too early to say whether this represents a change in the long-term downward trend”.