Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of individuals falling victim to e-mail and internet phishing each year; and what is their estimate of the total value of the amount of money involved.

I would refer the noble Baroness to the reply I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Stone of Blackheath on 14 October 2014, Official Report, column 30W.

It is not possible to give an exact figure for the number of individuals falling victim to email and internet phishing attacks each year as data held centrally cannot separately identify phishing scams. Phishing is an enabler to commit fraud or computer misuse offences, it is not in itself a crime, and the methods by which offences are committed are not collated centrally. Action Fraud will record the relevant fraud, or computer misuse offence, in instances where a phishing email has been used. It is therefore also not possible to estimate the total amount of money this would involve. However, a survey by the Oxford Internet Institute shows that 19 per cent of internet users experienced phishing attempts in 2013, down from 22 per cent in 2011.