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September 2022 - Information Technology

Computer misuse in England and Wales increased by 89% over the last two years: A study into fraud and general digital crimes has uncovered that commuter misuse in England and Wales has increased by 89% in the last two years.

While many other types of crime have decreased since 2020 (attributed to Covid-19 and periods of national lockdown), fraud and computer misuse offences have increased substantially, driven by a large number of hacking incidents (1.6 million offences).

The annual Crime Survey for England and Wales gathered data from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and looked at offences reported directly to the police.

Fraud

In the year ending March 2022, there were over 930,000 cases of fraud reported to the police: an increase of 17% from the year before.

Indeed, the number of fraud cases reported to the police rose by 25% from the year ending March 2020 to the year ending March 2022.

When it comes to cyber-related fraud, the findings highlight that instances have increased from 53% in 2020, to 61% in 2022 -- and when looking at computer misuse in general, it was found that the number of incidents have increased by 69%. This includes the number of incidents relating to unauthorised access to information (hacking), doubling. However, the number of computer viruses reported dropped from 440,000 in 2020 to 330,000 in 2022.

Bank and credit card fraud was the only type of fraud to decrease from March 2020 to March 2022, found the research. down from an estimated 2.5 million incidents to 2.3 million. On the other hand, the number of consumer and retail fraud incidents increased by 500,000 (57% increase), with advanced fee fraud increasing to 600,000 from 60,000.

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