A report by Veriff focussing on ONS Crime statistics in England and Wales since 2014 seeks to illuminate trends in online scams and hacking.

The study found that Social media hacks have increased by 274% since 2014.

In 2021 alone, there were over 400,000 reports of online fraud and cybercrime in the UK. Activity in this space rose by a third between April 2020 and March 2021.

Trends over the past eight years likely reflect the rise and fall of different online industries. 

Social media hacking has seen the largest increase, while lottery scams saw the largest decrease since 2014. 

“Over the years, we can see how the current climate in the UK and around the world has impacted the rise and fall in scams during that same time period,” Caroline Mogford, Chief Marketing Officer at Veriff said. 

Online shopping scams were the largest of its kind in the pandemic years, as Brits had an increased dependence on these kinds of services

The most common of these were online auctions, where anonymous scammers pose as sellers of popular items for cheap prices. 

Passport application fraud also went down, likely due to the pandemic dampening people’s international travel plans. 

Despite an overall downturn in the past eight years, lottery scams increased between 2019 and 2021 by 55%, perhaps fueled by the cost-of-living crisis driving more people to resort to the lottery.

Extortion crimes saw a sharp rise in 2017 as more consumers turned to cryptocurrency. Which? found that 20% of online fraud victims payed scammers using cryptocurrency in 2022. 

“We’ve also seen a rise in hacking scams with more and more people sharing personal information about themselves across social media,”  Mogford said. 

Fraud cases increased during the pandemic overall by 33%, according to Which?’s analysis. 

The market for hacked digital information grew between February 2021 and June 2022, according to a report by Privacy Affairs. Products on the dark web are more diverse than ever, with hacked cryptocurrency and web services on the rise. 

Whizcase also found that prices for hacked social media accounts are lower, and demand has grown. LinkedIn and Gmail accounts were the most expensive hacked products, but still only cost $45 USD each. 

Despite a rise in cybercrime, the UK Justice committee found that though fraud accounted for 40% of crimes reported, efforts to combat fraud only amassed to 2% of total police funding.

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Action Fraud, a tool used by police to track fraud and help victims, was also found to be ‘unfit for purpose,’ according to the committee. 

The Justice Committee urged the government to work with key stakeholders in the tech industry to prevent cybercrime and protect consumers. 

Veriff’s report hopes to shed light on patterns in targeted mediums to prevent further cybercrimes.

“Not only will understanding past scams help to prevent them from rising again, but it will also help to predict what scams might occur as a result of what is currently happening across the globe,” Mogford said. 

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