Fraudsters have stolen £593 million from UK accounts since April as reports of such attacks continued to increase throughout the year.
New figures suggest that cyber criminals have been getting more sophisticated in their attacks and are stealing hundreds of thousands of pounds from just a single intrusion in some cases.
The latest update to Money.co.uk’s Fraud and Cyber Crime Report reveals that there has been a rise of 1,407 cases of fraudulent activity in April, May and June, in comparison to the first three months of the year, at a cost of £593 million.
This takes the total fraudulently stolen cash to almost 3 and a half a billion pounds in the past 12 months.
Investment fraud came out on top for the past three months as the most financially damaging type of fraud with total losses of £135.2 million, at a similar level to the previous quarter in terms of the amount and number of cases.
The most common type was consumer fraud, with more than 31,000 cases totalling £93 million in losses, which is a drop of around 13 million compared to the Q1 losses (though the number of cases remained roughly the same).
Online shopping fraud accounted for more than 20 per cent of all fraud and cyber crime reports in the quarter.
Public sector fraud saw a notable uptick with more than £50 million worth of losses due to pension fraud alone.
Those aged 30-39 were targeted the most with those aged 20-29 not far behind. Older age groups more commonly experienced crimes in the categories of computer software service fraud, advance fee fraud, cheque/card fraud, and door to door sales.
As for hotspots, Northamptonshire saw the biggest rise – figures rose by over 22% – with the total value of losses of over £4 million. Other forces that saw big increases in Q2 included Warwickshire (9%) and Leicestershire (8%).
James Andrews, money.co.uk’s credit card expert, said: “This is a reminder for us how important it is to protect our digital data and be more vigilant when making purchases online.”
Read the report here
