Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of (1) the incidence, and (2) aggregate cost to victims, of online fraud; and what assessment they have made of the success of (a) the technology platforms, and (b) enforcement authorities of (i) identifying fraudulent sites or activity, and (ii) effectively countering them.

As of March 2021, online fraud was estimated, using data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, at 58% of fraud while the volume of fraud against individuals was 4.65 million incidents. The most recent estimate (December 2021) of fraud against individuals was 5.2 million incidents. However, an estimate of online fraud for this period is unavailable at present.

The Home Office does not collate statistics regarding costs to victims of online fraud. The most recent estimate of the total cost of fraud against individuals is £4.7 bn for the FY 2015/16. The Home Office also does not measure ‘success’ of technology platforms and enforcement authorities in identifying fraudulent sites and activity and countering them. The Home Office works closely with the National Cyber Security Centre who launched their Suspicious Email Reporting Service in April 2020. This has already led to over 11 million reports received and the removal of over 78,000 scams and 144,000 harmful websites to date.

The Government’s programme of work to tackle fraudulent online advertising in collaboration with industry includes the Online Safety Bill and the Online Advertising Programme.