Online crooks steal £2.6bn in gathering crime wave
By Maija Palmer, technology correspondent
Published: January 15 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 15 2010 02:00
Online fraud has become common and is growing rapidly, writes Maija Palmer .
An estimated £2.61bn was stolen online from people in the UK in the year to September, according to a YouGov survey.
About one person in eight was a victim of identity fraud during that period, and the average amount stolen was £463.
The value of online banking swindles rose 55 per cent to £39m in the six months to June, according to Financial Fraud Action UK . Criminals obtain account passwords and siphon off money.
Credit card ID theft - in which criminals get hold of card details and use them to buy goods and services, often via the web - rose 23 per cent to £23.9m in the first half of last year.
Often customers are duped into revealing their account details on websites masquerading as bank sites, or lists of account details are stolen directly from retailers' computer systems.
An underground economy exists in which stolen card and account details are bought and sold, sometimes for as little as 50p.
Moneybookers, the online payment service, estimated in a survey that during the Christmas period online retailers lost about £105m - 0.8 per cent of their takings - as a result of cards that turned out to be stolen.
AVG, an online security group, estimated that shoppers lost £185m - about 2 per cent of total spending - on fraudulent websites during the Christmas period.
The money was deducted but the goods were never sent and - sometimes - the site simply disappeared.
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