ONS Data Reveals 6m Cases Of Fraud & Cybercrime Last Year

There were almost six million cases of fraud committed in the UK last year, with instances of cybercrime continuing to increase.

This is according to the Office for National Statistics, which estimated in a new report that one in 10 people in the UK are victims of fraud.

The figures come after questions about fraud were added to the Crime Survey for England and Wales last October.

And the ONS has found that adults aged 16 and over experienced an estimated 5.8m fraud and computer misuse incidents over the past 12 months.

Of these cases, 3.8m were instances of fraud and 2m were incidents of cybercrime.

Speaking about the official estimates, John Flatley from the ONS Crime Statistics and Analysis team said: “This is the first time we have published official estimates of fraud and computer misuse from our victimisation survey, and ONS is leading the world in doing this.

“Together, these offences are similar in magnitude to the existing headline figures covering all other Crime Survey offences. However, it would be wrong to conclude that actual crime levels have doubled, since the survey previously did not cover these offences.

“These improvements to the Crime Survey will help to measure the scale of the threat from these crimes, and help shape the response.”

Of the 2m “computer misuse” incidents, the ONS said 1.4m involved a computer or internet-enabled device being infected with a virus.

The remaining 0.6m came from issues related to unauthorised access to online information, through methods such as hacking.

The most common type of fraud was bank and credit card fraud, with 2.5m incidents reported, followed by 1m cases of online shopping or fraudulent computer service call fraud.

To see the full report, please click here.