The scale of the offences have been revealed as the most authoritative estimates yet were published.
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“Together, these offences are similar in magnitude to the existing headline figures covering all other crime survey offences”.
“Most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year”, the survey authors said.
This is the first time that the national crime survey conducted by the ONS has tracked cyber crimes.
There were 2.5 million crimes relating to bank and credit accounts, making it the the most common form of fraud, the ONS said.
But unlike wider crime, the risk of being a victim of fraud is “more evenly distributed across society than most other crimes”, Flatley noted, regardless of whether they live in urban or rural areas, or in deprived areas.
People are 20 times more likely to be a victim of fraud than robbery, and 10 times more likely to suffer fraud than theft, the survey suggests.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed the true scale of online crime in the England and Wales, and it is high enough to effectively double the overall crime rate.
City of London Police Commander Chris Greany told Sky News: “I think the figures show fraud and cyber-crime is a serious matter we need to look at”.
“Last year, we launched the second stage of our cybercrime training, which focuses on developing the awareness and skills of frontline officers, as well as more specialised investigators”.
Some 68 percent of those computer misuse incidents were virus related and the other 32 percent involved unauthorised access to a computer, including hacking.
The agency has released the stats as part of its annual survey of crime in England and Wales, spanning the year from April 2015 to March 2016.
She said fraudsters are “increasingly targeting people directly”.
It also said it could be due to the expansion of a “violence without injury” category, which includes two extra notifiable offences.
He said: “Crime is not falling, crime is changing”.
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Overall, the crime survey showed a 6% fall in the number of crimes compared to a year ago, but figures recorded by police showed a rise of 8% which statisticians believe can be partly explained by better police recording methods. “But considering the huge volume of personal and financial data that most people place online, it’s vital that consumers become more vigilant about protecting their digital footprints”.
