UK Edition
Cyber criminals rob £10.9bn from UK residents in a year - and even more goes unreported
Online fraudsters stole £10.9bn in the UK last year - equivalent to a £210 loss for every person in the UK over the age of 16, official figures have revealed.
But in reality, the loss may be even greater.
Get Safe Online, the government-backed cyber safety initiative, suggested actual victims of cybercrime suffered an average loss of £523.
However, this refers to the people who actually reported the fraud to Action Fraud, the national cybercrime and fraud reporting service, while 39pc questioned by Get Safe Online said they were a victim of cybercrime but did not report it.
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In the past 12 months, those living in Kent lost more than £4 billion as a result of cybercrime - by far the highest amount stolen, according to Action Fraud.
Those living in the Devon and Cornwall areas were robbed of almost £3.5 billion, while residents in Scotland have collectively been robbed of more than £394.6 million.
On the other end of the scale, people living in Jersey reported a loss of £237,315 and fraudsters took £397,465 off residents in Gwent.
Get Safe Online could not confirm how much of this was later returned to victims.
A much bigger problem
The survey responses gathered by Get Safe Online suggested that there is a lack of understanding about what constitutes online crime.
Despite 86pc of respondents claiming not to have been targeted by cyber criminals in the past year, the research revealed 68pc of the UK has come into direct contact with fraudsters in one way or another.
More than half of people (53pc) have received phishing messages. These are emails or texts that appear to come from trusted sources and include links to spoofed websites asking for personal information.
Common phishing scams include fake HMRC emails that promise a tax rebate or a message from iTunes requesting a subscription confirmation via an included link.
Criminals may also pose as banks. Fraudsters recently created two bogus Natwest Twitter accounts to lure customers to a spoofed online banking site to “verify their details”.
Once on the site, customers were asked for personal details such as account numbers, passwords and contact information.
The research also revealed over a quarter of respondents (28pc) reported being contacted by someone trying to con sensitive details out of them.
A tenth of people said their email or social media account had been hacked and 3pc had been victims of ransomware. This is a type of cyber attack that sees criminals encrypt data on their victims’ computers and demand money for them to unlock it.
More than a third of online fraud victims said they thought the incident was too trivial to report and 37pc said they did not think anything could be done about it anyway.
In many cases of scams reported by Telegraph Money, victims often lose their money and the police do not investigate because there are not sufficient "viable lines of enquiry".
Scams that are reported to Action Fraud are assessed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, part of the City of London Police. Victims are notified within 28 days if their case will be passed on to a local police force.
In conveyancing fraud, where the average loss is £101,000, Telegraph Money revealed just 60pc of cases are investigated.
Stay safe online
Tony Neate, chief executive of Get Safe Online, said protecting yourself online is essentially about improving habits.
Almost half of people use the same password for multiple online accounts and 12pc said they did not change their password after a data breach when instructed. Nearly a quarter (23pc) said they did not update privacy settings on social media because, in most cases, they did not know how.
Mr Neate said: "Let’s not let cyber criminals get away with it anymore by ensuring that each and every one of us is updating the operating systems of our various devices and ensuring security software is always updated.
"What’s more we all need to ensure that we have a different password for each online account we own and website we visit. Online safety needs to be part of our everyday routines.”
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