Incidents of Phishing - 315/20

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request data from the last two years, 2018 and 2019 - for the time period 01/01 - 31/12.

1. I would like all incidents of cases that fall under 'phishing', in particular, those that are related to email phishing, or email scams. If you could supply me with reports of these and the status of each report, whether it was taken forward or not.
2. I would also like the details of the reports, for example, and if applicable, this could include the amount of money stolen.
3. What was asked for.
4. The age of the victim.
5. I would also like this data broken down by location.

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

This data has been taken directly from database by performing a search across all text of all incidents within the date range for the term "phishing."  These were then manually reviewed to establish if the criteria of this request was met.

When viewing the figures, the following caveats and interpretations apply:

• "Taken Further" relates purely to action taken by Northumbria Police, and in that, defined as being logged as a crime.
• Many of these cases state that the caller has been advised to take this forward to Action Fraud. These cases have not been counted as further action being taken, as any further action would be taken by another agency at the request of the victim.
• Victim Age has been based purely on the date of birth listed on each incident and the incident date. The exception to this is if the age of the victim has been stated within the incident, or if the victim in question is an organisation rather than an individual.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would expect that you to take into consideration the factors highlighted above so as not to mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

With the above noted I am able to provide the following:

1.

Taken Forward	Count
Y	12
N	53

 

2.

Amount £	Count		Amount $	Count		Amount (€)	Count
£1 - £1000	8		$1 - $1000	10		€1 - €1000	1
£1001 - £2000	0		$1001 - $2000	3		€1001 - €2000
£2001 +	6		$2001 +	7		€2001 +

 

3.

Other Demands	Count
Bank details	2
Car insurance	1
Retail voucher	2
Online account login details	1
Personal information	1
Unspecified bitcoin investment	1
Total	8

 

4.

Victim Age	Count
20-29	14
30-39	6
40-49	1
50-59	12
60-69	11
70-79	8
80-89	3
90-99	1
Unspecified	9

 

5.

Location	Count
Newcastle	20
South Tyneside	5
Northumberland	19
Sunderland	7
Gateshead	11
North Tyneside	3