Fraudsters have fleeced more £40m from Hampshire people during pandemic

Criminals have taken advantage of the rise in internet purchases as well as concerns over health and wellbeing through the crisis, says Action Fraud, the UK's fraud and cyber crime authority.

In Hampshire, 12,334 incidents of fraud and cyber crime were reported from the start of February last year to the end of March this year, according to data from Action Fraud.

The value of the crimes amounted to £40.4M, the equivalent of around £9,528 each day.

And Hampshire's figure could be higher with some 23,600 reported offences – worth £469.4m – not recorded to a specific police force area.

The figures also show online shopping scams were most common type of fraud and cyber crime, along with advance fee and computer software frauds.The Action Fraud figures also show the age of victims in the reported fraud and cyber crime offences over the 14-month period from February last year.

In Hampshire, the most commonly targeted were people aged between 20 and 29, with around 2,200 reported victims making up 18 per cent of all those who gave an age.

There were some 3,600 reports with victims aged 60 and over – 30 per cent – including 90 aged between 90 and 99.

SEE ALSO: Thug who attacked police appears in court

James Adnitt, digital intelligence investigation protect officer of Hampshire Constabulary’s Cyber Crime Unit, said: ‘During the last 12 months, cybercriminals have been targeting social media users and accounts – especially as people’s digital footprint has increased and people have spent longer online due to the global pandemic.

‘We are often told not to respond to cold calls or suspicious looking emails - and we wouldn’t give large sums of money to a stranger.

‘Yet, hacking into an individual’s social media account gives the offender access to a lot of personal information, including that of the ‘friends’ of that hacked account; which could open the floodgates to hundreds of other possible victims.

‘The two most common goals for the criminals are convincing friends to either lend them money, because their online banking isn’t working and they need to make an urgent payment or help them get back into another online account, such as an email account. This results in the friends email and social media accounts also being hacked.

‘If someone contacts you on social media asking for financial help or assistance in gaining access to an account, make contact with them using some alternative method such as a text or a phone call to verify that they are who they say they are and that their request is genuine. Cybercriminals use computer programs to analyse written communications on hacked accounts so they can be mimicked when messaging other potential victims.

‘The National Cyber Security Centre have provided some tips on preventing cybercrime via it’s Cyber Aware campaign.’

People are advised to use a strong and separate password for email, create strong passwords using three random words, save passwords in browsers, turn on two-factor authentication (2FA), update devices and back up data.

A spokesperson for Action Fraud said: ‘In what has been an incredibly challenging year, we have sadly seen devious criminals taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic as a means to commit fraud.

‘To carry out their scams, criminals have been honing in on people’s anxieties and the changes that have occurred to our daily lives, such as the fact we have all been shopping online more.’

Consumer group Which? Said the figures showed online purchase scams were now being running on an ‘industrial scale’ – and accused tech giants of not doing enough to protect users.

Adam French, consumer rights expert, said: ‘The coronavirus crisis has meant that more people are shopping online than ever before, while opportunistic scammers have been coming up with increasingly sophisticated tactics to steal people's money.

‘Search engines and social media sites have some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, yet they are failing to use it to protect their users from scammers abusing the platforms through fake and fraudulent content.’

In response, Google, which runs the most-used search engine worldwide, said it had ‘strict policies’ over advertisements run on its platform with 3.1bn advertisements, including 123m for financial services, blocked and removed last year.

It also claims to block 100 million emails to users each day.

However, the company said it was seeing an increasing number of fraudsters promoting bogus businesses or running phone-based scams to lure users off its platforms and avoid detection.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

You can subscribe here for unlimited access to our online coverage, including Pompey, for 27p a day.