Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many reports the National Cyber Security Centre received regarding scam websites in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) acts to remove malicious scams from the internet as part of its Active Cyber Defence programme. In addition to proactive identification and removal of malicious websites, the NCSC also acts upon reports from the public.
The National Cyber Security Centre's online form for reporting scams and suspicious websites, www.ncsc.gov.uk/scams, was launched in August 2021.
The NCSC's pioneering Active Cyber Defence programme has also taken down 2.3 million cyber-enabled commodity campaigns - including 442 phishing campaigns.
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what recent assessment they have made of trends in levels of online fraud.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
The Home Office collects quarterly data on the number of reports of fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) incidents made to Action Fraud that have been recorded as criminal offences by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).
This data is published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on a quarterly basis and is available from June 2015 to June 2021 in table A5, which are attached.
Action Fraud reported that levels of fraud have increased since the pandemic. Fraud and CMA offences are collected and presented separately, though some fraud offences will often involve an element of online activity, but we are unable to provide a breakdown of these offences.
Crime Survey for England and Wales data for the proportion of offences flagged as cyber are collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are available for 2016/17 to 2019/20. The latest estimates by ONS for the year to March 2020 suggest that around 53% of all fraud is online enabled.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) reported instances (b) prosecutions and (c) convictions for fraud conducted online in (i) 2018, (ii) 2019 (iii) 2020 and (iv) 2021.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The number of prosecutions and convictions for fraud offences that were conducted through phone calls is not centrally held in the court proceedings database, as the specific use of phone calls is not separately identified from wider fraud offences in legislation. Equally, offences conducted by text message and online are not separately identified in legislation. Identifying these offences separately would require a manual search of court records, which would be at disproportionate costs.
Published figures provide the number of prosecutions and convictions for the following offences that may include offences of fraud which occurred online, through phone calls or by text:
Computer Misuse Act 1990
Fraud Act 2006
The number of prosecutions and convictions can be found by searching for the above offences in the ‘Detailed offence’ filter in the ‘Principal offence proceedings and outcomes by Home Office offence code’ data tool available here:
Information on the number of recorded fraud offences, which may help to answer part (a) of the questions, is held by the Home Office
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle online fraud.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Frauds that are committed online are pernicious crimes. They can cause terrible financial and emotional harm to victims. The Government has been working with partners in the public and private sectors to keep the public safe and bring these fraudsters to justice.
DCMS are leading ground-breaking work on the Online Safety Bill. The Bill will require regulated companies to take action to tackle user-generated fraud on their platforms. This will impact some of the most harmful online fraud types such as investment and romance scams. The Joint Committee recently published their report on the Bill and we are scrutinising this closely to make sure we comprehensively address their recommendations. DCMS are also leading work through the Online Advertising Programme that will consider, amongst other things, the role online advertising plays in enabling online fraud.
We have also been working closely alongside the National Cyber Security Centre who launched their Suspicious Email Reporting Service last year. This has already led to over 8.1 million reports received and the removal of over 67,000 scams and 124,000 harmful websites, since its inception in April 2020.
However, Government and the public sector cannot tackle online fraud alone. That is why, on the 21 October 2021, the Joint Fraud Taskforce was relaunched under my [Security Minister] chairmanship. The JFT brings together leaders from across the Government, private sector, regulators, law enforcement and victim groups to encourage collaboration to keep the public safe from these crimes. Alongside the relaunch, we published voluntary agreement with the retail banking, telecommunications and accountancy sectors outlining innovative measures to reduce fraud facilitated through these industries (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/joint-fraud-taskforce). The Online Fraud Steering Group (OFSG) is a public-private group focused on reducing the threat from online fraud in the UK. It reports into the Joint Fraud Taskforce and is co-chaired by the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC), UK Finance and techUK.
We continue to encourage the public to report fraud to Action fraud and to forward any suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 7726, free of charge.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to protect older and more vulnerable people from online scams.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Government recognises the serious risks presented by scams and fraud and the huge financial and emotional impact they can have on victims. This is why the Home Office is working with other departments, law enforcement and the private sector to better protect the public and businesses from fraud, reduce the impact on victims, and ensure fraudsters have no space to operate.
This includes the development of a new Fraud Action Plan, the relaunch of the Joint Fraud Taskforce and publication of charters with the retail banking, telecommunications and accountancy sectors. As part of the Police Uplift Programme to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by 2023, we have prioritised more investigators in the City of London Police to fulfil their role as a world class fraud specialist force.
We have also channelled additional resource into the Regional Organised Crime Unit network to work on a host of serious and organised crime threats including fraud. The Government is also reviewing asset recovery powers to ensure the architects of such scams cannot profit from their crimes and intends to bring forward legislation on crypto assets when parliamentary time allows.
We continue to encourage the public to report fraud to Action Fraud and to forward any suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 7726, free of charge.
This information is being used by the City of London Police alongside crime reports to identify, disrupt and stop fraudsters. Any contact with rogue traders should also be reported to Trading Standards at
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/report-to-trading-standards/.
Asked by: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle online fraud.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Frauds that are committed online are pernicious crimes. They can cause terrible financial and emotional harm to victims. The Government has been working with partners in the public and private sectors to keep the public safe and bring these fraudsters to justice.
DCMS are leading ground-breaking work on the Online Safety Bill. The Bill will require regulated companies to take action to tackle user-generated fraud on their platforms. This will impact some of the most harmful online fraud types such as investment and romance scams. DCMS are also leading work through the Online Advertising Programme that will consider, amongst other things, the role online advertising plays in enabling online fraud.
We have also been working closely alongside the National Cyber Security Centre who launched their Suspicious Email Reporting Service last year. This has already led to over 8.1 million reports received and the removal of over 67,000 scams and 124,000 harmful websites, since its inception in April 2020.
However, Government and the public sector cannot tackle online fraud alone. That is why, on the 21 October 2021, the Joint Fraud Taskforce was relaunched under my [Security Minister] chairmanship. The JFT brings together leaders from across the Government, private sector, regulators, law enforcement and victim groups to encourage collaboration to keep the public safe from these crimes. Alongside the relaunch, we published voluntary agreement with the retail banking, telecommunications and accountancy sectors outlining innovative measures to reduce fraud facilitated through these industries (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/joint-fraud-taskforce). We are also engaging the tech sector specifically through the Online Fraud Steering Group.
We continue to encourage the public to report fraud to Action fraud and to forward any suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 7726, free of charge.
Asked by: Owen Thompson (Scottish National Party - Midlothian)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if the Government will make platforms responsible for fraudulent and scam content hosted on their sites.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government is working tirelessly with industry, regulators and consumer groups to tackle fraud. We are also considering additional legislative and non-legislative solutions to effectively address the harms posed by all elements of online fraud in a cohesive and robust way.
My Department is considering how online advertising is regulated through its Online Advertising Programme. This work will look at ensuring that standards about the placement and content of advertising are effectively applied and enforced online to reduce consumers’ exposure to harmful or misleading advertising. This work will look at the role advertising can play in enabling online fraud and help inform our future efforts to tackle it. We will be consulting on this issue later this year.
Although paid-for advertising is exempt in the current draft of the Online Safety Bill, some types of advertising will be in scope. This includes posts by influencers and posts by companies on their social media feeds. Companies will therefore need to ensure that these posts do not host illegal content. The Bill is currently undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny and we will consider all recommendations from the Joint Committee when they report.
Asked by: Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle cyber crime.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As technology develops, so too do opportunities for cyber criminals to target the UK. The arrival of 5G and the Internet of Things will create multiple new vulnerabilities, including inside people’s homes. ‘Deep Fake’ technology provides opportunities for fraud and identity theft or for exploitation and extortion. We need to confront these crimes and develop and improve technological safeguards so that citizens never become victims.
As we made clear in the Beating Crime Plan published earlier this year, we are working across government to deliver improvements to the UK’s cyber resilience and ensure we stay ahead of cyber criminals. We have invested £195 million over the last five years to establish a specialist cyber law enforcement network to disrupt and prosecute cyber criminals and support victims in response and recovery. We are developing a campaign to confront the growing threat of ransomware and to disrupt cyber criminals based overseas.
We will publish a new National Cyber Security Strategy later this year. The Strategy will drive significant improvements in the UK’s response to cybercrime. It will strengthen the Law Enforcement response and drive greater collaboration with the National Cyber Centre and the National Cyber Force.
Asked by: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has with the National Cyber Security Centre to tackle growing cyber crime in the next five years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As technology develops, so too do opportunities for cyber criminals to target the UK. The arrival of 5G and the Internet of Things will create multiple new vulnerabilities, including inside people’s homes. ‘Deep Fake’ technology provides opportunities for fraud and identity theft or for exploitation and extortion. We need to confront these crimes and develop and improve technological safeguards so that citizens never become victims.
As we made clear in the Beating Crime Plan published earlier this year, we are working across government to deliver improvements to the UK’s cyber resilience and ensure we stay ahead of cyber criminals. We have invested £195 million over the last five years to establish a specialist cyber law enforcement network to disrupt and prosecute cyber criminals and support victims in response and recovery. We are developing a campaign to confront the growing threat of ransomware and to disrupt cyber criminals based overseas.
We will publish a new National Cyber Security Strategy later this year. The Strategy will drive significant improvements in the UK’s response to cybercrime. It will strengthen the Law Enforcement response and drive greater collaboration with the National Cyber Centre and the National Cyber Force
Asked by: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Barran on 19 July (HL1969), on which specific pages of the National Cyber Security Centre's website their statistical data are published.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Full details of the NCSC’s comprehensive response to the proactive identification and removal of malicious activity on the internet can be found in its Active Cyber Defence Year 4 report: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/acd-report-year-four. This report outlines all the measures the NCSC takes to identify and remove the malicious activity before it ever reaches the public. Up to date SERS statistics can be found at https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/report-suspicious-emails#section_1
If a person falls victim to a phishing email, that should be reported to the police via Action Fraud and it will be logged as a crime.
The 2021 Cyber Security Breaches Survey found that 32% of businesses identified experiencing phishing attacks in the previous 12 months. The survey does not ask about the proportion of phishing attacks on businesses that were successful. However the survey does find that, among the 39% businesses which identify any cyber breaches or attacks, one in five (21%) of these end up losing money, data or other assets.
The government does not hold similar statistics specifically related to phishing attacks against individual citizens.