FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3923
You asked
Please supply the following information:
- Statistics on the amount of reports of cyber crime in the UK in the last 3 years (2018-2021), broken down by year.
- If possible, please break this down into types of cyber crime.
If possible, the amount of crime related to fake modelling scams.
We said
Thank you for your request.
'Cybercrime' is not a specific crime type that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects.
However, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) does include computer misuse, as well as fraud recorded as online. Additionally, this data is only held for England and Wales only, not the whole of the UK.
Crime in England and Wales: Appendix tables year ending March 2021 release, Table A1, shows the CSEW estimates for computer misuse incidents were:
- Year ending March 2017 = 1,764,000
- Year ending March 2018 = 1,227,000
- Year ending March 2019 = 966,000
- Year ending March 2020 = 876,000
Due to the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, the CSEW was paused and a telephone-operated version of the survey (TCSEW) was implemented. The number of incidents estimated were:
- Year ending March 2021 (TCSEW) = 1,749,000
The TCSEW data is not directly comparable with estimates from the CSEW.
The Nature of crime: fraud and computer misuse publication presents annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and the telephone-operated Crime Survey for England and Wales for May 2020 to March 2021. In Table 4, the proportion of fraud that had a 'cyber' element to it is presented, which was 58%.
It is not possible to disaggregate for the number of 'fake modelling scams'.
For data in Scotland please contact: Justice_Analysts@gov.scot.
For Northern Ireland, contact: zCSUwebstats@psni.pnn.police.uk.
If you have any other crime-related queries in the future, you can email crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk.