Police record average of more than 150 internet-related crimes EACH DAY

Police record more than 150 internet-related crimes EVERY DAY, new figures suggest.

Official figures suggest web-related crimes are being logged at a rate of one every 10 minutes, with forces in England and Wales registering at least some online element in more than 55,000 offences including harassment, blackmail and child sex allegations in the year ending June 2017.

And that doesn’t include fraud and computer misuse, which are recorded centrally.

In April 2015, it became mandatory for police to return quarterly information on the number of crimes flagged as being either fully or partially committed online.

The latest findings show 55,866 offences were flagged by officers as online crimes from July 2016 to June 2017.

Harassment and stalking made up the largest chunk of the online-flagged crimes, making up around 14% in the year to June, while the online was also applied to 8,012 obscene publications offences, 6,327 child sex offences and 2,081 blackmail offences.

Online-flagged offences account for only a small proportion of the total number of crimes registered by forces, which stood at around 4.5 million in the year to June, excluding fraud.

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The 55,866 was nearly 20,000 higher than the 36,995 registered in the previous 12 months, although the data sources were not identical for both periods.

Notes on the “experimental” figures, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this month, suggest the percentage will rise going forward, saying: “Work is still ongoing with forces to improve the quality of the data submitted in this collection.

“There are some large variations in the proportion of offences flagged by each force depending on crime type and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the flag is currently underused.

“Therefore, going forward, with improved identification of online-related offences, the proportion of all offences flagged as being online related is likely to increase.”