Cyber-crime committed 'every 10 seconds'

Cyber-crime will continue to grow until the authorities categorise these crimes properly and put in place clearer reporting procedures, according to a new report.

This was the conclusion of online identity expert Garlik, which in collaboration with criminologist 1871, has published the report showing more than 300 cyber-crimes are committed every hour in the UK.

The ‘UK Cybercrime’ report is the first to chart the extent and types of online crime experienced by Britons in 2006. The study estimates that more than three million online crimes were carried out in the UK alone last year; these included financial fraud, blackmail, sexual offences and computer hacking.

Yet despite these enormous figures, Garlik and 1871 said they believe nine in every 10 cases of cyber-crime, which is fast outstripping 'traditional crime', is never reported because victims wrongly believe the activity is not criminal or that the police will be unable or unwilling to investigate. Garlik said until action is taken, cyber-crime will continue to grow.

Tom Ilube, Garlik's chief executive officer, said: "At the moment we don't have a focus on the problem, so how can we be equipped to deal with it. People need an easy way to report and categorise these crimes but it isn't there.

"Our research show the scale of these problems; over the six months collating the figures we used documents from 26 different sources and would have liked to have used more, such as court papers, to see how a crime was prosecuted."

Ilube said the current change in reporting procedures for credit and debit card crime introduced by the Home Office on 1 April this year would not help. People no longer report these crimes to the police and only to their bank.

There are fears among security experts such as card fraud protection specialist Early Warning that this will skew crime figures. Ilube said this would not give a coherent picture of the problem.

"The police need to take the lead here but other organisations such as banks, the Government, the internet industry and the public need to get together. There needs to be a clear understanding of what is going on," he told Computeractive.

The study found of the three million reported crimes more than 850,000 sexual offences, 200,000 cases of financial fraud, 90,000 cases of identity theft and 144,500 cases of hacking into a person's PC.

A number of factors are driving this crime wave. Key to this growth are the lack of a central point of contact to report these crimes, the lack of a clear, legal definition for cyber-crime and the relative anonymity the internet offers.

Ilube also pointed to another driving force; people's perceptions and a change in moral attitudes to online crimes.

"Our moral compass appears to be out of kilter. The scale of the activity with what is actually reported because of acceptance on both sides - the victim and the perpetrator - of what is normal behaviour has shown a shift in what we see as acceptable online behaviour that we would not happen in real life," he said.