London & Scotland Are More Affected By Financial Cyber-Crime

An estimated 2 million people were hit by reported computer misuse cases in the year up to September 2016, according to new figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), while a separate study found those in London and Scotland were more likely to be targeted by financial cyber-crime than elsewhere in the UK.

The ONS’ Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), published on Thursday, is the first to include full-year figures for computer misuse and fraud.

Personal data access

It found two-thirds of the computer misuse cases, or 1.3 million, involved computer viruses while one-third (34 percent, or 700,000 cases) were related to unauthorised access to personal information.

Fraud was the most common crime recorded in the figures, with 3.6 million incidents, out of a total of 11.8 million incidents overall, according to the ONS.

The study recorded 939,000 incidents of non-investment fraud, about three-quarters of which involved the use of the Internet in some way.

London, Scotland targeted

A separate study carried out by YouGov on behalf of regulatory technology provider Equiniti found that instances of financial cyber-crime varied greatly depending on location within the UK.

One in three Londoners (30 percent) said they had experienced financial cyber-crime, dropping to one in four (24 percent) nationally and one in five (21 percent) in the North of England.

In Scotland and the East of England one in four (25 percent), higher than the national average, said they had been affected.

Younger people aged 18-24 were considerably less likely (at 13 percent) than any other age group to have been affected by financial cyber-crime, while gender made little difference, with 23 percent of men and 24 percent of women targeted.

Do you know all about security? Try our quiz!