Substantial increase in fraud and computer misuse offences

Overall fraud offences increased by 25% to 4.5 million offences in the year to March 2022 when compared to the year to March 2020, with this being driven by a large increase in “advance fee fraud” and “consumer and retail fraud”. 

The proportion of fraud incidents that were cyber-related increased to 61% from 53% when compared to two years ago, suggesting much of the increase in fraud offences was because of a rise in cyber-related fraud. It may be related to behavioural changes during the Covid-19 pandemic and increased online activity. 

In addition to this, computer misuse increased by 89% to 1.6 million offences when compared with the year ending March 2020, driven by a large increase in unauthorised access to personal information offences. 

And, while survey estimates showed continued falls in computer virus offences since 2017, the trend in unauthorised access to personal information offences remained fairly flat between 2017 and 2020. 

However, hacking offences more than doubled in the year ending to March 2022 increasing to 1.3 million offences when compared with the pre-Covid year to March 2020. This included victims’ details being compromised via large-scale data breaches, and victims’ email or social media accounts being compromised. 

This increase may, in part, reflect the rise in the number of large-scale data breaches around the world. Findings from the Cyber Security Breaches Survey showed 39% of UK businesses identified cyber breaches or attacks in the last 12 months. 

There was also a 17% increase in fraud reported to the police, going up to 936,276 offences, compared with the year ending March 2021, and a 25% increase compared with the year ending March 2020. 

Action Fraud, meanwhile, reported an 11% decrease in fraud offences dropping to 354,758 compared with the year to March 2021, when offences hit a record 398,022. Despite this, the ONS said it’s too early to say whether this indicates a change in trend.