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UK: 7 out of 10 scams are related to cybercrime

Wednesday 30 April 2014 09:49 CET | News

Cybercrime is on the way up when it comes to fraudulent actions, with 7 out of 10 scams now involving an IT element, detective Superintendent Pete O’Doherty, head of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau unveils.

According to him, cybercrime is rapidly increasing, both in volume and in complexity. The total number of fraud offences reported to police almost doubled in the last financial year. There were 230,845 frauds recorded in 2013/2014, more than 630 a day, compared to 122,240 the previous year, an 89% increase.

In addition, around 70% of these scams now involved a “cyber element”, compared to around 40% five or so years ago. There were 494 cases of companies saying that their computer servers had been hacked.

About 6,000 people also told police their social media accounts such as Facebook were hacked into, mostly by ID fraudsters stealing details of their personal lives.
 


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Keywords: cybercrime, online security, fraud, UK
Categories: Fraud & Financial Crime
Companies:
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Fraud & Financial Crime