Cybercrime in Britain surges in past year, ONS reveals
Updated : 12:10
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has reported 5.8m incidents of cybercrime in the last year, nearly double the crime rate in England and Wales.
According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), one in 10 adults were victim of online shopping scams, virus attacks, theft of bank details and other online offences in the year ending March 2016. Majority of offences at 3.8m included bank and credit card fraud while the remaining 2m offences were computer misuse offences such as virus attacks. The figure is much higher than the initial ONS estimate in October last year of 3.8m or 40% of all criminal offences.
Excluding online crime, the figures for all offences fell 6% to 6.3m.
The murder rate rose to its highest rate in five years by 34 to 571 homicides. Police records also showed a 27% rise in violence against the person offences and a 21% increase in sexual offences. Nearly half the rise in personal violence offences, excluding physical injury, were incidents of revenge, porn and harassment. Offences involving the use of knives or sharp instruments by 10% and those involving firearms increased by 4%. Improvements in the method of recording these instances have had an effect increasing these figures.
The cybercrime figures confirmed the high threat and volume and online attacks and scams. However, as this is the first time the ONS have included cybercrime in their survey, it downplays the twofold increase in the crime rate. “It would be wrong to conclude that actual crime levels have doubled, since the survey previously did not cover these offences” said Head of Crime statistics and analysis John Flatley.
The 5.8m figure has been estimated based on six months of interviews with a 9000 sample size. Headline estimates will include cybercrime offences for the first time in January 2017 once questions have been asked for a full year. Separate home office figures show police officer numbers simultaneous fell by 3126 to 124,000 in the same period, the lowest since 2003.